`I have an absolute conviction that now, at the end of this century, we are going to change the face of Northern Ireland. We are going to tackle our problems together - all of us." These were Seamus Mallon's brave, hopeful words at the opening of the Northern Assembly just a week ago.
How has it happened that within days of that new beginning, Northern Ireland seems to be sliding back to fear and despair? Perhaps even more important for the future, why have the political leaders of the new order not been seen to act together in a more concerted fashion to resolve the problem?
We know David Trimble and Seamus Mallon are working continuously behind the scenes to find a compromise. But that is not the same as making a public demonstration of their common determination to tackle their problems together.
There is no sense that any line on the parades has been worked out, except for the necessary appeals to both sides to refrain from violence. Apart from a couple of press briefings, there has not - at least so far - been any occasion when the two men have joined to speak publicly to both communities in Northern Ireland, to rally the support of that majority who voted for the Belfast Agreement and are fearful it could unravel under the strain of the present impasse.
Instead, there is the impression that both sides are retreating to their respective tribal trenches. The unionist leadership supports the Orange Order's right to march down the Garvaghy Road and dismisses the Parades Commission, set up by government, as "discredited".
Nationalist representatives argue, equally strongly, that the rule of law must be upheld and the rights of the Garvaghy Road residents defended. Perhaps the most depressing intervention so far has come from John Taylor, warning that the new Assembly will be in danger if the Portadown Orangemen are not allowed down the Garvaghy Road. Mr Taylor said the present crisis reminds him of the days immediately prior to the fall of the power-sharing executive in 1974. But the situation is fundamentally different.
As deputy leader of the largest unionist party, one might have expected Mr Taylor to remind us that 71 per cent of the electorate voted for accommodation and that, whatever happens in the days and weeks immediately ahead on the streets of Northern Ireland, it will be the task of politicians to take the agreement forward.
What is urgently needed now is some dramatic gesture by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister to send that message of a firm resolve to both communities.
I've been asked several times in recent days, usually by bewildered onlookers who don't live in Northern Ireland, how it has happened that a local quarrel - albeit a bitter one - involving a few yards of disputed road can imperil the political progress that has been made so painfully over the past two years. Unfortunately, it's a major part of the problem that this is not how the dispute looks to those involved. On the contrary, both sides see it in almost apocalyptic terms as a critical test for the future.
In Drumcree churchyard, on the sunny evening just before the march, I talked to a man who was tending the flowers on his parents' grave. It was hard to imagine a more peaceful scene. Then he said to me "We'll stay here for as long as it takes. If we don't win this time, the Protestant community in Northern Ireland is finished." A few minutes' walk away, on the Garvaghy Road, there is the same sense that this is a historic confrontation, a matter of "facing down" the unionist veto once and for all.
One man, a civil servant in his 40s, said, "I'm totally against violence, most people in this community are. But if the Belfast Agreement means anything, the Orangemen have to treat us as equals. That's why we want them to talk to us. They won't because the whole point of their marching here is to assert, for another year, that they are superior to us."
In Portadown this perception is fuelled by the sectarian bitterness in the town itself. Over and over I was told by parents on the Garvaghy Road that they could not allow their children to go into the centre of town after dusk, that the police would not protect them. Against this background it is pointless, counter-productive even, to demonise Breandan Mac Cionnaith as the source of all the problems. He simply represents the mood in his own community. We know, too, that there are similar stories from the other side of the sectarian divide.
Whatever about the intensity of local feelings in Portadown, the threat to the wider political process in Northern Ireland is deeply worrying. There is a danger, if the situation continues to escalate over the crucial weeks of the marching season, that both communities could retreat into the mutual hostility and mistrust that prevailed after Drumcree in 1996. That is why it is important that political leaders, unionist and nationalist, should be seen to act as partners in the search for a solution.
This is a time for David Trimble, Seamus Mallon and other party leaders committed to the Agreement to take risks for peace. One remembers Mo Mowlam's decision, so controversial at the time, to talk to loyalist prisoners in the Maze and cannot help wondering what might still be achieved if David Trimble and Seamus Mallon were to travel together to talk to both sides, the Orange Order and the residents of the Garvaghy Road.
It may be that they will not be able to resolve this particular crisis and it will have to run its course. But such an act would be a timely reminder that there is a longer perspective here and a greater challenge ahead. David Trimble put it very well in his speech just before the Assembly election when he spoke of getting down to "the historic and honourable task of this generation: to raise up a new Northern Ireland in which pluralist unionism and constitutional nationalism can speak to each other with the civility that is the foundation of freedom."
I have quoted from these two speeches by David Trimble and Seamus Mallon deliberately. It is important to remember in this bleak week, that these men are capable of considerable vision and political courage. Together with their colleagues in the other parties, their patience and determination brought us the Belfast Agreement and all the hopes that have flowed from it.
It is their misfortune, and Northern Ireland's, that they have been confronted so early in their new political relationship with a crisis which is so deeply emotive for them and the two communities they represent. It makes it all the more vital that both men keep their eyes firmly on the long term and the prize of a lasting political settlement.