Spartacus Mmxii Apr 2026

And we stood in the rain on the traffic island, at the roundabout’s broken white lines, and we aimed at the badges and logos of business, at the grilles of the four-by-fours, at the windows of showrooms and the revolving doors.

And as the sirens wailed and the choppers clattered and the police piled out of their vans, he grabbed my arm and he pulled me clear, and he melted into the crowd and disappeared.

Here is the text of the poem Spartacus MMXII by Simon Armitage. This poem was commissioned for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and originally appeared as a large-scale public artwork. spartacus mmxii

I’d known of him, the legendary rebel, the gladiatorial slave who’d broken his shackles, who’d raised his own army, who’d plundered his master’s grave.

He said, There are slaves in the hands of the banks, slaves in the arms of the state, slaves to the wage, to the zero-hour contract, slaves to the zero-hour rate. And we stood in the rain on the

So I went online to track him down, to seek him out in the cyberworld, and typed his name into the search box, the key and the password.

He said, You can’t see the chains for the rust. You can’t see the whips for the scars. You can’t see the crosses for the dust, but we’re still fighting where you are. This poem was commissioned for the London 2012

We flared and we fused in the halo of streetlights, we danced and we dived and we ducked, till the shop windows rained, till the windscreens wept, till the airbags burst and the bumpers bucked.