for Mike Lesser
Michael John Lesser, September 28, 1943 – July 1, 2015
the person in the casket can no longer change things
and the casket is lowering through classical columns
disappearing into a chute
to burn
to a Dylan dirge
a hand grasps the casket from below
the person is disappearing
*
we’re sad he fieldmarshalled
a war on reality
but reality fought back
so he fought again
winning on a technicality
following Debord
to some Paris-en-ciel
hear ye!
a member of ‘The Committee of One Hundred’
and of ‘The Spies for Peace’
is dead
(this changes things for the worse)
*
the crematorium is populated
with a few dozen activists
and a few dozen associates.
the ashes will be scattered on the scatter-lawn
and there is food and drink at the Spaniards Inn.
the activists agree on nothing
but lamenting their friend and comrade.
his wild autism gone with him,
things seem somehow almost polite
*
a strange rain falling for the first time in months
and the tied tarpaulin like a membrane protecting us
(Author’s note: having attended the funeral service for Mike Lesser
at which I read a seventeen syllable elegy ‘MIKE-U’, I had to leave
the gathering at Spaniard’s Inn to particpate in a poetry workshop
by the Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah, which I had booked months
earlier. Arriving somewhat inebriated at the workshop, I wrote and
recited a version of the above poem during the hour – to a startled
assembly – before returning to the anarchists on the hill for a last drink
to the man whom Heathcote Williams dubbed ‘the Great Enabler’.)
Niall McDevitt
portrait of Mike Lesser by Nicola Lane
Photo of Mike as a boy Dan/Jane Johns