The early winter woods are a letter
Torn open by the wind
Script scatters on the ground
Shifting, recombining
Sunlight hesitates among the branches
Weaving threads of gray
Trying to string together a plot
Only to read
Two silent ellipses
— Jujube
In the hush of shadows,
the pond tries to remember
who it was mirroring.
Like the white and red blooms,
we live for a moment of illumination—
then return
to where light cannot follow.
— Jujube
In distant lands, on hill and plain,
thus do I dream, when nights are long, —
and memory gives back again
the whisper of that long-lost song.
— V. Nabokov
The window holds the breath of rain.
I sink into the blueness of sleep.
Dream and daylight braid,
as the shadows of the leaves
sway.
I have no need, for my nocturnal travels,
of ships, I have no need of trains.
The moon’s above the checkerboard-like garden.
The window’s open. I am set.
— V. Nabokov
Wine hums, lanterns flicker.
Moon sneers, time falls into dust.
Who stitches sorrow in the dimming light,
While night is still young.
Not quite a bed, not quite a bench.
Wallpaper: a grim yellow.
A pair of chairs. A squinty looking-glass.
We enter — my shadow and I.
— V. Nabokov
Tipsy antiquity, barely holds
the coolness of the gleam.
Time lingers,
soft as the evening’s breath.
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
Unusual Colors - Digital and AI art 