The Menin Gate At Ypres

My Father took me to the Menin Gate lest I should not knot that lives were lost to make me free. Then at the cemetery I fell asleep while he walked along the rows on soft grass between the crosses. Then I heard the tanks roll round a heavy grinding hell-raising sound that crunched the gravel. Before the echo died came boots of soldiers. I seemed to see them travel along the road ahead all brown and swinging trouser legs. Above the sound of boots and breathless gasps of marching men were wheels and wheels and rumbling trucks the swish of lighted flares gunshot glow and bombard shoots I could not wake myself, I had to hear those boots upon the gravel. Then as I woke myself it seemed like blood red rain was falling down. But through the mist those white crosses rose, arms out, began to fly above the cemetery up into the blue sky. Like flocks of swans they rose with strange gladsome sound and disappeared into the blue-grey sky, time passing as so many joined the upwards wave of spirits above my exhausted self. Soldiers of the Commonwealth lie here, black and brown and grey and white in peace, I hope, not hearing what I heard, the rosary of sorrow, Passchendaele's site that kept off foreign troops from Belgian soil until another night.