Derry's contemporary poet, Seamus Heaney, describes the uneasy Anglo-Irish relationship in terms of a husband's feelings for his pregnant wife - ACT OF UNION Your back is a firm line of eastern coast And arms and legs are thrown Beyond your gradual hills. I caress The heaving province where our past has grown. I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder That you would neither cajole nor ignore. Conquest is a lie. I grow older Conceding your half-independent shore Within whose borders now my legacy Culminates inexorably. Ulster's tragic melodrama has continued to unfold, the great majority of the population, though still segregated by the sour dance of religion and history, has looked on aghast from opposing wings, hoping that peace can bring down the curtain, permanently, on a show which has long outrun any purpose it once had. -- "Irish Counties, " J. J. Lee