‘The sheer profile of the city is intricate and uneven. Above the walls appears, naissant, armorial and unreal, a high hatched outcropping of huddled balconies, black rufous brown vermillion and white; the upper stages of wicker towers; helmet-like hoods of tinted stucco; tamarisks; the smaragdine and olive of tropical vegetations; tinselled banners; gigantic grey sea-green and speckled cones, rising like truncated eggs from a system of profuse nests; and a florid zoologic symbolism – reptilian heads of painted wood, filled out tinfoil or alloy, that strike round beneath the gusts of wind, and pigs made of inflated skins, in flight, bumped and tossed by serpents, among the pennants and embossed banners. The severe crests of bulky ziggurats rise here and there above this charivari of roof-life, perceived beyond and between the protecting walls. It is without human life, like a city after a tragic exodus.’
from The Childermass by Wyndham Lewis
Absence Club 