Last Saturday afternoon, I sat on on a ledge on the side of Ben Bulben mountain and watched the clouds roll in from the sea. At around the same time exactly 78 years ago, W B Yeats passed away in France. One of his last poems was called Under Ben Bulben and the last verse is an instruction for his epitaph. The final three lines of that poem adorn his headstone in Drumcliffe cemetery, where he was re-interred. As I took the photo above, the sun burst through the clouds to pick out the church and graveyard (in the centre of the image). One of my favourite poems by Yeats is Sailing to Byzantium, his meditation on ageing. From my vantage point high above Sligo, it’s not a bad spot to contemplate Of what is past, or passing, or to come.