THE MENIN GATE...

Menin Gate: The Last Post

I found no tears,

Or grind of emotion

But respected the expected silence;

Leaning with a heaving, gawping, agog host,

To glimpse the unknown bugler,

Who played a pleading, searing Last Post.

I spilled no tears,

Or expression of devotion

But depression at repression’s generation,

Straining in a pressing, filming, insouciant throng,

To hear an unknown bugler

Signal honour to the missing, their deaths so wrong…

Pete Ray

Built up to be a ceremony of sheer emotion, The Last Post at the Menin Gate left me cold. 

The lists of names did too.