This chapter evaluates Heaney’s interest in both war and peace across the two world wars and the recent conflict in Northern Ireland. It treats ‘The Aerodrome’, ‘Anahorish 1944’, and ‘In Memoriam Francis Ledgwidge’ as representative considerations by Heaney of the world wars in the context of human testimony and the role of the poet to represent violence properly and resist aestheticizing it. Then it assesses the more familiar poetry about the Northern Irish conflict, including ‘The Tollund Man’, ‘Punishment’, ‘The Harvest Bow’, ‘Tollund’ and ‘A Kite for Aibhín’, along with his September 11 poem, ‘Anything Can Happen’, and relevant prose. Such poems recognize violence’s siren call and capacity for myth-making even as they reject it, and Heaney finally privileges poetry as an ethical space where its wholeness can slowly percolate into unhealthy societies, a precondition for eventual peace.