Saxby Pridmore: Three Poems

Wolfgang Beltracchi 3

Wolfgang Beltracchi the forger

Does paintings that can’t be spotted

Of all but the femme Borgia.

It’s not that he isn’t besotted

It’s not that he can’t do a Dosso.

But he works to serve the people

And they prefer Picasso

And so he makes them equals.

Should his talent be going to waste?

For his work cannot be told apart

He’s in jail a touch shamefaced

We’d be better off if he was doing his art.

Until we ask we can only wonder

Could he please replace some Nazi plunder?

Saxby Pridmore

as in cummings

For the sake of an “e”

The word was wrong.

Moral is bad

When morale is good.

Saxby Pridmore

A Perfect War

HMAS AE2 had the perfect war. She was

British built at Barrow-in-Furness and

Came out on “the longest submarine transit

In history”.

Brand spanking new and as luck would have

It (she was ever a lucky lady) the First War

Burst in less than a year so she was towed

Back to the Aegean Sea.

Into the narrows of the Dardanelles on

The morning the lads lobbed at Anzac Cove

Up ahead the Froggie sub Saphir was sunk

AE2’s orders “run amok”.

She torpedoed the Ottoman Peyk I Sevket

(fortunately nobody was hurt) twice ran aground

And popped up everywhere to give the impression

She had company.

She rubbed along cello strings tethering mines

Spotted the Ottoman Sultanhisar and dived. When

She broke the surface again the Sultanhisar holed

Her in the stern.

The End. They abandoned and scuttled her

All crew conveyed to the Sultanhisar. AE2 had a

Perfect war. She cheered the boys on at Gallipoli

Torpedoed an enemy ship

Rubbed against mine moorings, the first Allied

Vessel to make the Marmara Sea and best of all

Nobody got hurt, Ottoman or Ally. All good fun

The way war should be!

Saxby Pridmore