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, Look for the hill where the ragwort grows, the slope where the dog-rose climbs. Meet me tonight with a brick or a stone, with a bottle or a bottle of rhymes. spartacus mmxii
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. So I went online to track him down,
So if you want to see Spartacus, come to the park, come to the park with me. If you want to see Spartacus, search him out in the 21st century. And as the sirens wailed and the choppers
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.
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.
So I went to the hill where the ragwort grows, the slope where the dog-rose leans, with a half-brick wrapped in a carrier bag, with a copy of Big Issue magazine.