“Yesterday’s committee, sticks, but a broken drum, midnight in the city, flutes in a vacuum, shut lips, sleeping faces, every stopped machine, the dumb and littered places where crowds have been: … All silences rejoice,weep (loudly or low), Speak- but with the voice of whom, I do not know. 
Absence, say of Susan’s, absence of Egeria’s arms and respective bosoms, lips and ah, posteriors, slowly from a presence; whose ? and I ask, of what so absurd an essence, That something, which is not, nevertheless should populate empty night more solidly than that with which we copulate, why should it seem so squalid ?”
Aldous Huxely, Brave New World
Reflection 