A Poem About Print, I.M. Adrian Mitchell Poem by Sally Evans

'Death singles out the great, '
and as this year's low sun subsided
it singled you - and the untrodden airwaves,
the fluttering impulse of internet
and clatter of movable print locked in cases
and blocked into pages of books -
the thump on the desktop, another pamphlet,
laser printed, hand-folded and sewn
in fabled back-bedrooms of little press offices,
at the forefront of speaking and writing,
for people, by people -
and the rhythmed babble of poets
as they speak out, and write out -

All this stopped dead for you just before Christmas.
We all stopped in the week we would have stopped anyway,
as your image and influence readjusted itself
and was seen for what it had always been -
brave exposure of lies, the music
of 'buttercups and landmines',
the shift of perception when a prophet
arrives in his own country,
in both our countries, overlong married,
permanent mutual lodgers, our languages
interwoven and melded
so we cannot untangle where one starts or ends -
the occasions, the years you spoke out for us.

It is up to us how well you are rewarded
for the hot spark of your words as they travel,
their iron.