Last night, 20 April 2016, I attended a commemoration in poetry and song at The Catholic University of America honoring the Easter Rising. Her Excellency Anne Anderson, 17th Irish Ambassador to the U.S., launched the evening with two short contemporary poems.
Dr. Coilin Owens concluded the event discussing the aftereffects and lingering significance of the Easter Rising 1916.
“I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”
–W.B. Yeats, From “Easter 1916.”