“On Passing the New Menin Gate” – digt af Siegfried Sassoon, 1927
Siegfried Sassoon deltog den officielle indvielse af Menin Gate den 24. juli 1927. Han skrev derefter "On Passing the New Menin Gate" på sit hotelværelse i Bruxelles dagen efter indvielsen. Digtet blev offentliggjort efter digterens død i 1967.
On Passing the New Menin Gate
Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, –
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.
Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.
Fra: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/pathways/path/vauggk/10
