To this Siegfried Sasoon, the poor wretch,

I feel an odd and grim relation.

Through his passing of the New Menin Gate

We share a self-same damnation.

 

And yet, cruel fate, to all the dead

Did ‘Nameless’ name these people.

Evinced upon a stone, inscribed the doom

That their families lament in steeples.

 

When my mates, in animation renewed,

Steered the helm of our battered ship

Through shades of gloom I wondered

What thoughts they bore of abandoned crypt.

 

Sepulchre of crime! Siegfried did say.

The Dead who struggled in slime,

Unvictorious Victors the lot,

Their horror and shame hidden in time.

 

Thirty pieces of silver! A Peace-makers fine

Paid by the foul, crud-encrusted dead.

“Their name liveth forever” the Gateway claims.

But forever I live with a name unsaid.

 

So must he, after many deaths, persist

And recall the terror of grave and of trench.

With circumstance and pomp are debts repaid.

But what glory lies in death, pain and stench.

 

O monument of cruelty! With human blood paid.

What vainglory diplomats transcribed

The lays of maps whose borders wax and wane

Like the moon shining on empire o’er imbibed.

 

A thirteen-coiled knot for a generation of sons

And what albatross will be borne by the kings?

While mustard gas hangs in the air like silence

Or London fog, or limbs of brothers in slings.

 

Life and Death I know, betwixt and in twain.

And noble Sasoon knows no less.

The gleam in mine eye does captivate all

As the rime of his words so profess.

 

This wat’ry world is wide indeed

And strange times have we now.

The azure orb, once seemed so whole

Appears so fractured, disavowed.

 

Steer the helm and hold true.

Pray let us fly from this place,

From where death seems to dwell.

What other horrors must we face?

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