The invisible communion

If you take Wolburn Place from Euston Road and continue straight ahead, down Northampton Road towards Holburn and, further down, Kingsway, at some point after Russell Square to your left, you will find a hidden, not-too-big, not-too-small gardened square, which name is Queen Square. At one of the sides, at the entrance, there it lays a big flowerpot with colorful flowers in the memory or something or somebody. A piece of stone sits on the ground underneath the pot and there it goes this inscription by Larkin carved in the slab:

"1952 - 1977
In times when nothing stood
but worsened or grew strange,
there was one constant good
she did not change".

The verses brought me a whole universe of powerful images around "nothing stood", "grew strange" and "she": the scene of a woman standing still when the world around is falling apart.

I like it.

In striving daily to push ourselves in life with and against this double-edged gift of individual freedom, the sweet taste of the invisible communion comes handy at times when you find a connection with someone else, someone who might share habits, tastes or illness with yourself. Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985) -not knowing nothing about him- just turned to be the last connection I am talking about.

Albeit he looks like a sexual-depraved maniac in photographs, how to dismiss an expression of awe and communion for this:

"Being brave
Lets no one off the grave
Death is not different whined at that withstood".

Or for this:

"I work all day and get half-drunk at night
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die".

Or for this:

"Isolate rather this element
That spreads through other lives like a tree
And sways them on in a sort of sense
And say what it never worked for me".

Or for this:

"And kneel upon the stone,
For we have tried
All courages on these despairs,
And are required lastly to give up pride,
And the last difficult pride in being proud".

Now, alas!, communion shall travel farther than where Wikipedia leads; shall dig a deeper fruit than that facebook only lives by.

(PLEASE, DROP YOUR COMMENT).