Although the poem is written as a satire, it does depict a very real landscape of rural Ireland, as introduced to public consciousness through the work of writers like Seamus Heaney. This is cued through images of the “wickered house”, the sea, and the descriptions of farmland and wildflowers. Although this was a landscape of great beauty, it was also a place of great poverty and social constriction. The speaker then feels himself caught between loyalty to this beautiful place and potential of the unknown.