Dean

“The setting sun that lights the tips

Of TV's giant paperclips

Upon the roof;

The shadow of the doorknob that

At sundown is a baseball bat

Upon the door,

The cardinal that likes to sit

And make chip-wit, chip-wit, chip-wit

Upon the tree;

The empty little swing that swings

Under the tree: these are the things

That break my heart.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“Rain in a foreign city is different from rain in a place you know. I can’t explain this, while snow is the same everywhere.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.”
― Ernest Dowson, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson

“She taught them all a song. Learned from a para on French leave from the fighting in Algeria:

Demain le noir matin,
Je fermerai la porte
Au nez des années mortes;
J’irai par les chemins.
Je mendierai ma vie
Sur la terre et sur l’onde,
Du vieux au nouveau monde . . .

He had been short and built like the island of Malta itself: rock, an inscrutable heart. She’d had only one night with him. Then he was off to the Piraeus.
Tomorrow, the black morning, I close the door in the face of the dead years. I will go on the road, bum my way over land and sea, from the old to the new world. . . .”
― Thomas Pynchon, V.