Beginning: Opening Stanza in "Butcher's Dozen"
The opening and the ending of "Butcher's Dozen" are a preliminary framework that reconstruct such a historical horizon of Bloody Sunday 1972 in Derry, and further contextualize the town Derry as being between the present and the past historically and geographically.

The poet's walk in the streets implicitly brings out the historical horizon of "Butcher's Dozen" and the context of Derry. This poem begins with the poet's descriptive observation of the scene after the occasion:

I went with Anger at my heel.
Through Bogside of the bitter zeal
-Jesus pity!-on a day
Of cold and drizzle and decay.
Three months had passed. Yet there remained
A murder smell that stung and stained.
On flats and alleys-over all-
It hung; on the battered roof and wall,
On wreck and rubbish scattered thick,
On sullen steps and pitted brick. (NLD 77)

The poet demonstrates his promenade vision of the shooting scene around Rossville Street in Derry (so-called Bogside) after Bloody Sunday. The poet walks through these flats and alleys and recalls this occasion when the "murder smell" still "stung and stained" over "flats and alleys" in the streets. This perspective of the Bloody Sunday scene introduces the sense of "cold and drizzle and decay" and then simultaneously reconstructs the demonstration on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry. This introductory observation deliberately depicts and then symbolically penetrates the problematics of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This aftermath-account metaphorically delineates the poet's position among the crowds of two thousand marchers on the scene of Bloody Sunday. Like journalists' reports on newspapers and television, this poetic account also unfolds the consequences of constructing historical truth in accordance with the Widgery Report. In addition, the poet's observation unexpectedly elicits the hidden and erased parts of Derry history, uncovering the devious trajectory of historical discourse embedded in the streets of Derry as well as in this poem.

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 Geography and History

The physical geography of Derry correlates its historical link with words like "wall," "hill," "Colmcille's town." Here the word "wall" implicates an important connection or a fictional relation between this observation and the historical significance of the Derry Walls, parts of Old City of Derry on the 120 feet-high hills above the Lough Folye. The Derry Walls on the hill, "the heart of the city," was established in 1610 as the new town of King James I's plantation in between the bog and the lough. This new town Londonderry, strategically functioned as the fortress, and it was constructed in the original site of the monastic town of Derry Colmcille in the sixth century (Thomas 69). Hence, the Derry Walls, part of Londonderry in the present, are the historical remains of the colonial plantation. According to geography and the history of Derry, the Derry Walls represent not only the symbol of British colonization in the late 17th century, but also later on are significant for surveillance and domination in the event of Bloody Sunday.

Tracing back to the obliterated parts of history in the Gaelic context, around the mid-sixth century St. Colmcille established the monastery in Doire, which is described as the "angel-haunted" city with St. Colmcille as the patron (Deane 13). With two verse stanzas attributed to Colmcille and selected from Latin poems around the 11th or 12th century, Colmcille explicitly praises the beauty of Derry:

The reason I love Doire:
its calmness, its purity
and the number of white angels
from one end to the other !
.……………………………..
Our Doire, with all its acorns,
Sad, spiritless, sunk in tears:
it hurts my heart to leave it
and turn toward alien people. (NOBI 67-8)

At first St. Colmcille describes Doire/Derry as being calm, pure, and bright, which is apparently far different from the bleak, bloody and dark scene on Bloody Sunday 1972. The monastic town is full of blessings, hopes and angels that contrast to the hatred, violence, and death in modern Derry. For the second part, Colmcille not only depicts the natural scenery of Doire as "oak grove," but also metaphorically delineates Doire as the ruined town as "spiritless" and "sunk in tears." Though these poems present feelings of St Colmcille's exile to Scotland and Britain, the second part still suggests a prophetic message of the recurring colonial experience in the local history of Derry. These two short stanzas implicitly point out the Viking's invasion between the 9th century and 11th century, and the Norman's settlement around the 12th century. Furthermore, this poem initiates a process of uncovering the history of Derry and colonial experiences from its founding period to the moment of Bloody Sunday in "Butcher's Dozen."
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The second part of the Widgery Report offers the "physical background," or geographic fact as well as the socio-political situation of Londonderry from the interment period to the occasion of Bloody Sunday. This section of the report simply focuses on the area along the Bogside, where the Bloody Sunday event mainly happened, and further investigates the geopolitics and demographics in the Catholic communities of Derry:

This area, which is shown on the map and is in the north-east corner of the Bogside district, is overlooked from the south-east side by the western section of the City's ancient Walls, which encircle the old heart of the town and which have major significance in Orange tradition because of the successful defence of Londonderry against James II; and from the west by the Creggan, a largely new district built on rising ground. Creggan and the old town look at one another across the Bogside. The Bogside and Creggan are predominantly Catholic districts, their population amounting to about 33,000 out of a total population in the City of Londonderry of about 55,000. The Bogside contains a number of old terraced houses and buildings, many of them derelict or nearly so; but also a large number of new blocks of flats and maisonettes. The small area with which the Tribunal was concerned lies on flat ground at a meeting point of old and new buildings. All flats so frequently mentioned in evidence -the Rossville Flats, Glenfada Park, Kells Walks, Columbcille Court, Abbey Park and Joseph Place-are very modern buildings. . . . A notable feature of the area is that it contains a number of large open spaces which have been cleared of buildings, on both sides of William Street and of Rossville Street, as well as the courtyards and the open spaces arising from the layout of the new blocks of flats. (WR11-2)

This narrative of geography in Derry seems to focus on the strategic perspective of the town for British authorities but rather unfairly deals with the historical development and context of the two opposing communities in Derry as well as to simplify the conflicts between Britain and Ireland. Though this report did mention the history of the Walls, this historical account of Derry is still fragmented and intended to obliterate as well as to break down the Gaelic context of Colmcille's Derry, the founding period of the monastic town. Compared with this official investigation of the Catholic community in Creggan and Bogside districts of Derry, "Butcher's Dozen," akin to St Colmcille's poem, makes rather a sympathetic response and a diachronic implication of this town, its people, and this occasion through the events of Bloody Sunday. Kinsella's historical discourse in "Butcher's Dozen" not only represents a series of silent witnesses and latent historical realities on Bloody Sunday, but also questions a recurring pattern of Irish history-the constant invasion of foreign forces and the influential impact of colonialism on the Irish people and culture. In other words, this poem pinpoints the continuous hostility between Ireland and England; the Derry Walls are a symbolic barricade between Irish Catholics and British/Scottish Protestants in Northern Ireland.

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