in that townlet in the towers’ shadow
the sound of life was reckless clatter,
the mixture of tipsy antiquity
and of the present liveliness
were healthful for me: my soul’s ready
to relish everything beneath the moon,
the ancient and the new.
— V. Nabokov
We so firmly believed in the linkage of life,
but now I’ve looked back — and it is astonishing
to what a degree you, my youth,
seem in tints not mine, in traits not real.
— V. Nabokov
Memory creeps like moss along the wall.
I stand in the hollow alley,
recalling her voice
only to hear
the murmur of my own shadow
Let us fold the wings of our visions.
It’s night. Buildings, all angular, on each other
topple. Shadows are fractured.
The street lamp is a broken flame.
— Vladmir Nabokov
The castle, the river, murmur the stillness;
The grass, the trees, deepen the green haze;
Birds lift, never quite ready for parting.
In the quiet pavilion, the sky is clear,
the night holds its breath.
Spider silk gleams,
incense spirals
lovers’ stars meet—
I lean back, watching the moonlight drift
through the paulownia shade.
Time slips soft into dark.
The fountain, loftily floating
its wondrous, its silvery voice,
plashes, and quivers, convoking
mirages of love and of loss.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Here as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangling walks, and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew
– Oliver Goldsmith
A language of loss and renewal, etched in the mist.
The willows lean in, trailing ink across the shore.
What we remember is always half-shadow, half-dream –
The lake holds it all.
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
– Langston Hughes
Unusual Colors - Digital and AI art 