This is a retrospective WWI poem by Siegfried Sasoon (1886-1967). Apparantly he had no high opinion of this war memorial which was unveiled on 24 july 1927.

The poem is recited here by Michael Hordern. It is part of an LP released in 1964 containing more WWI prose and poetry to which contributed various famous contemporary British artists.

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 worlds 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.

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