Rev dear Rev: In the poetry of the Anglo-Irish Poets of Ireland and Celtica generally there is sometimes recourse made to the religious side of the history of the twin islands, and even mention is made in one poem by Paddy Kavannagh of Ash Wednesday, is there something here about Lent that we can learn from, possibly?

My Auntie in Dublin used to meet the famous modern Anglo-Irish poet Paddy Kavannagh outside her workplace on her lunch breaks from a British firm in Dublin called Cavendish’s and she would pause and pass a pleasant hour or so with him talking about this or that latest poem. One of her favourites was the hauntingly beautiful poem “Pembroke Road”, a poem about ghosts, which is on the South Side near Merrion Square, and yet she also liked the more penitential and less sentimental one called “Ash Wednesday”. Kavannagh the young Irish Bard was well known for sketching in both the subjective poles of the experience of Lent for the Christians over yonder, but also in a subtle dark way at hinting at the objective poles of the experiences in his meditations on Lenten customs in old Ireland like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, say for instance in the poem on modern seminarian Incels, “Half a potato - eat it.” In this way, he was one of the few Anglo_irish poets who found a space in his poetry for those Christian Festivals and religious feastdays over there, one of the few who would be open and honest enough about the experiences of Lent to feature these religious themes as a subtle backdrop and allusion. In the poem “Ash Wednesday”, the general signing of the forehead with ash and the saying that goes with it, memento homo, is presented as an Anointing to a low level penitential style of living in a dark world like an ashen grey coronation of the simple early Christians as fellow princes and princesses and kings and queens of their own simple shopkeeper style carpenter king. Similar to that other modern Anglo-French poet, Robbie Butler, who describes his own experience of being anointed as a bardic poet atop the mountains of Positano Heights as these are overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea one year in the 1990s, in the poem “Tyrrhenian Sea” also interladen with themes of ashen Christian coronation too, with none of the glorious elements or solemn displays that used to characterise historical coronations of once upon a time in the age of empire. One meaning subjective, the other objective, since the Heights of Positano and the shrine nearby of the Saint Agatha, not a million miles from Diana’s Baths, are linked to another older story of those British Crusader kings and the shrine of St Agnes in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A true anointing then that takes place on Ash Wednesday reminding the Christians that they have to live responsibly in a dark world, that the path to glory takes its cue from Good Friday, there is no crown without a corresponding cross, and the true believer or belieber Christian has to share in his or her Master’s suffering sometimes in this world. A true anointing then with penitential ash, something Kavannagh alludes to in his other Christian poem Lough Derg, and this ash is put together from the burnt palms of the previous eastertide, and both young Bards, one from Ireland and one from France, note that this is why the catholic christians wear this ash with some pride, some sense of an august and carpenter king anointing and insignia. It reminds them then that there are subjective poles to the experience of Lent and also objective goals to be achieved with grace, namely arriving at the Fair Havens of the elves, in prayer and fasting and almsgiving. Amen.