• It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.

    Seamus Heaney: It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.
    Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.422, Macmillan