“The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.”

From “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

Mr. Eliot’s poetic image evoking a graveyard has stuck with me over decades — broken jaw of our lost kingdoms. When I visit a typical cemetery among marble monuments I think of his penetrating words, and I wonder why we place memorials in hollow valleys of dying stars. At that moment I feel quite sad.

I did not experience the same melancholy at this location, nor does that emotion overcome me when viewing our photograph. I am pensive but have none of the emptiness and desolation of sorrow. There is freedom from disturbance in this scene, tranquility within a certain busyness, perhaps the peace we hear about which exceeds our understanding. The dead here spent most of their lives in monastic silence, absorbed in working with their hands, study and prayer, which could account for the sturdy optimism our picture seems to radiate — no broken jaws here, and no personal kingdoms destroyed.