Thomas Kinsella: “Butcher’s Dozen” (1972)

Thomas Kinsella is an Irish poet and academic, born and educated in Dublin. In late 1972 Kinsella penned “Butcher’s Dozen”, a bitter and at times sarcastic response to Bloody Sunday and the British response. Kinsella’s poem takes aim at the one-sided Widgery Report, alleging unjustified shooting by British soldiers and the planting of evidence on the bodies of victims:

“I went with anger at my heel
Through Bogside of the bitter zeal
Jesus pity! On a day
Of cold and drizzle and decay.
A month had passed. Yet there remained
A murder smell that stung and stained.
On flats and alleys-over all-
It hung; on battered roof and wall,
On wreck and rubbish scattered thick,
On sullen steps and pitted brick.
And when I came where thirteen died
It shrivelled up my heart. I sighed
And looked about that brutal place
Of rage and terror and disgrace.
Then my moistened lips grew dry.
I had heard an answering sigh!
There in a ghostly pool of blood
A crumpled phantom hugged the mud:
“Once there lived a hooligan.
A pig came up and away he ran.
Here lies one in blood and bones
Who lost his life for throwing stones.”

More voices rose. I turned and saw
Three corpses forming, red and raw
From dirt and stone. Each upturned face
Stared unseeing from its place:
“Behind this barrier, blighters three
We scrambled back and made to flee.
The guns cried Stop, and here lie we.
Then from left and right they came,
More mangled corpses, bleeding, lame,
Holding their wounds. They chose their ground,
Ghost by ghost, without a sound,
And one stepped forward, soiled and white:
“A bomber I. I travelled light
Four pounds of nails and gelignite
About my person, hid so well
They seemed to vanish where I fell.
When the bullet stopped my breath
A doctor sought the cause of death.
He upped my shirt, undid my fly,
Twice he moved my limbs awry,
And noticed nothing. By and by
A soldier, with his sharper eye
Beheld the four elusive rockets
Stuffed in my coat and trouser pockets.
Yes, they must be strict with us
Even in death so treacherous!”
He faded, and another said:
“We three met close when we were dead.
Into an armoured car they piled us
Where our mingled blood defiled us
Certain, if not dead before
To suffocate upon the floor.

Careful bullets in the back
Stopped our terrorist attack,
And so three dangerous lives are done
– Judged, condemned and shamed in one.”
That spectre faded in his turn.
A harsher stirred, and spoke in scorn:
“The shame is theirs, in word and deed,
Who prate of justice, practise greed,
And act in ignorant fury – then
Officers and gentlemen
Send to their Courts for the Most High
To tell us did we really die!
Does it need recourse to law
To tell ten thousand what they saw?
Law that lets them, caught red-handed
Halt the game and leave it stranded
Summon up a sworn inquiry
And dump their conscience in the diary.
During which hiatus, should
Their legal basis vanish, good
The thing is rapidly arranged:
Where’s the law that can’t be changed?
The news is out. The troops were kind.
Impartial justice has to find
We’d be alive and well today
If we had let them have their way.
Yet England, even as you lie
You give the facts that you deny.
Spread the lie with all your power
– All that’s left; it’s turning sour.
Friend and stranger, bride and brother
Son and sister, father, mother.

All not blinded by your smoke
Photographers who caught your stroke
The priests that blessed our bodies spoke
And wagged our blood in the world’s face.
The truth will out, to your disgrace.”
He flushed and faded. Pale and grim
A joking spectre followed him:
“Take a bunch of stunted shoots
A tangle of transplanted roots
Ropes and rifles, feathered nests
Some dried colonial interests
A hard unnatural union grown
In a bed of blood and bone
Tongue of serpent, gut of hog
Spiced with spleen of underdog.
Stir in, with oaths of loyalty
Sectarian supremacy
And heat, to make a proper botch
In a bouillon of bitter Scotch.
Last, the choice ingredient: you.
Now, to crown your Irish stew
Boil it over, make a mess.
A most imperial success!”
He capered weakly, racked with pain
His dead hair plastered in the rain;
The group was silent once again.
It seemed the moment to explain
That sympathetic politicians
Say our violent traditions
Backward looks and bitterness
Keep us in this dire distress.
We must forget, and look ahead.”