More than an order of words
If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
Image attribution istolethetv, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
a person paying their respects at hong kong cemetary during qing ming festival, happy valley, hong kong.