One picture tells more than a thousand words. The old sub-editor's maxim is true - unfortunately. I watched President Mary McAleese's inauguration on television and knew at once, because I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck, that one image would be shown over and over again in the North. The camera lingered on Mo Mowlam, John Hume, Gerry Adams and George Mitchell sitting side by side. Symbol of peace or the pan-nationalist conspiracy made flesh? That depends on where you're coming from, but I wasn't surprised that poor John Alderdice, stuck in the middle, looked about as comfortable as an elderly parish priest caught in a gay bar. How long before some member of his own party quotes Moliere to him in pained tones: "Que diable allait-il faire dans cet galere?"
It wasn't the Alliance Party leader's fault, of course. Nor was Mary McAleese responsible for the seating arrangements. Her speech touched on the themes of reconciliation and inclusiveness but the overall impression, for this viewer at least, was of queenly condescension, and a suffocating smugness allied to cloying traditional piety.
In the context of this State that was understandable, although some of her less fortunate fellow citizens may have found it hard to recognise our new President's description of an Ireland "tantalisingly ready to embrace a golden age of affluence, self-assurance, tolerance and peace."
But against the terrible background of all that has happened in the North, her expressions of piety were simplistic, even offensive. There are people who have taken great risks to try to bring peace to the North and they do not need to be urged to create a "wonderful millennium gift for the Child of Bethlehem".
They are committed to the task because they want to end the tormented suffering of those thousands of people who, like the survivors of Enniskillen, cannot yet come to terms with the violence that has scarred their lives. If there was a real sense of disappointment, it was that nothing in Mary McAleese's speech gave voice to the deep, dreadful wounds that fester in the hearts of both communities in her native Ulster, or challenged us to recognise that we may never be able to heal them.
For many of us the most traumatic event of recent weeks has been that we have been forced to look again at the Enniskillen bombing and our own reaction to it. How easy and how comforting it was for us to be able to cling to Gordon Wilson's plea for forgiveness, to praise this as the true "spirit of Enniskillen". I do not want in any way to seem to question his grace and the greatness of his heart. But in recent days, listening to the testimony of survivors and to those who helped them on that terrible day 10 years ago, we have been made to understand that this was not the whole story, that in some ways Gordon Wilson's generosity of spirit made it impossible for others, who cannot forgive, to speak of their pain.
Over and over again, in television and newspaper interviews, those who knew and comforted the victims have spoken, very hesitantly at first, of the hard reality that many people in Enniskillen felt - and still feel - overwhelming anger and hatred for those who planted the bomb. Not all of them. There have been extraordinary examples of survivors who have emerged apparently unscathed spiritually, despite their terrible physical wounds.
But Denzil McDaniel, editor of the Impartial Reporter and author of a fine book on the Remembrance Day bombing, has spoken movingly of the fact that many of the victims who talked to him are trapped by the events of that day, unable to put their experience behind them and get on with their lives.
For me now, 10 years afterwards, the image I will carry of Enniskillen, alongside that of Gordon Wilson, is of Jim Dixon. Both he and his wife were hit by the bomb. Ten years later he is in pain 24 hours a day, to the point where, he says, he often feels like taking a mallet and beating his head until the pain goes away.
Jim Dixon says he will never forgive those who executed the bombing and is extremely bitter about those who urge him to do so. On Prime Time's fine report he told Mike Milotte: "Forgiveness is popular, but forgiveness is not honest." Several of those who are still struggling to accept the loss of loved relatives in the bombing said they could not forgive, either because the IRA had never expressed repentance for the atrocity or had never asked for forgiveness.
I do not know what would help these people, but Gerry Adams's statement that he was " deeply sorry about what happened at Enniskillen" falls far short of what is required if he wants to be taken seriously.
We are just beginning to realise that, even if the present talks succeed in delivering a settlement, we are going to have to find ways of bringing the victims of violence - as well as those who have perpetrated it - in from the cold. Unless we can heal these wounds, the legacy of bitterness will blight all hopes for a true peace.
LAST weekend Dr Samuel Poyntz, the former Church of Ireland Bishop of Connor, called for a Commission of Truth, Repentance and Reconciliation on the same lines as the body set up in South Africa to examine the crimes committed by both sides in the struggle to end apartheid.
Dr Poyntz draws attention to the many hundreds of people who will need "public reconstruction and reconciliation as they face desperate emotional turmoil and trauma if the peace process succeeds". Patrick Laurence has reported in this newspaper on the difficulties which the South African commission has faced, and the controversies in which it has become embroiled. The question of what is truth and how it changes depending on who is writing the script is as old as history itself.
The TRC is regarded with deep suspicion as a tool of the ruling ANC party and has been attacked by, among others, F. W. de Klerk. And yet there have also been extraordinary redemptive scenes of grace when killers, on both sides, have admitted their crimes and begged forgiveness of the relatives of their victims.
We have to learn to think in quite new ways about the task of achieving reconciliation if, God willing, we are blessed with the gift of peace. The commission over which Bishop Desmond Tutu presides has taken as its inspiration the words from St John's Gospel, "The truth shall set you free." But truth, or the search for truth, about the violent past presents an awesome challenge. Perhaps if we can meet it, we will be able to build an Ireland that meets the needs of all our people - as well as creating a gift for the Child of Bethlehem.