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

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

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