Yet one of Marzials’s claims to fugitive fame is authorship of reputedly the worst poem ever written. Called “A Tragedy”, it begins: “Death! / Plop. / The barges down in the river flop. / Flop, plop,” and it ends, “I can dare, I can dare! / And let myself all run away with my head, / And stop. / Drop / Dead. / Plop, flop. / Plop.”
Meh. It’s no “Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly”*. And anyway, I think we all know that the very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth.
* Hmm. I wonder if I could get away with using Fred L. Gruntbuggly as an occasional pseudonym…