"Some days the buildings pull in their protruding bay window stomachs and bashfully fold back their elegantly pointed balcony breasts, as if obeying an order to stand at attention with their mortar smoothed flat and their walls erect, because the municipal authorities, that is, their superiors, the towers, have come to make a report. They have put on their clockwork cupolas and are wearing the marshal’s baton tips of their weathercockscomb teeth on the bell chambers.

Some days the streetcar tracks spring out of the asphalt, shake off bothersome stops and move their terminals several meters up in the air.

What were you looking for in that city, Burgmüller?!

In that city, some nights moor their black sailing fleets so firmly to the buoys of the church steeples that they’re still there the next day. Far over the heads of the townspeople, the dust swarms of their thick night bird shadows pass through all the walls of the airspace vault and its ceiling fresco, drawing curved lines in the air.

What did you lose in that city, Burgmüller?!"

(Awakening the Great Sleep War)