Benjamin Banneker Helps to Build a City

In a morning coat,
hands locked behind your back,
you walk gravely along the lines in your head.
These others stand with you,
squinting the city into place,
yet cannot see what you see,
what you would see
--a vision of these paths,
laid out like a star,
or like a body,
the seed vibrating within itself,
breaking into the open,
dancing up to stop at the end of the universe.
I say your vision goes as far as this,
the egg of the world,
where everything remains, and moves,
holding what is most against it against itself,
moving as though it knew its end, against death.
In that order,
the smallest life, the small event take shape.
Yes, even here at this point,
Amma's plan consumes you,
the prefigured man, Nommo, the son of God.
I call you into this time,
back to that spot,
and read these prefigurations
into your mind,
and know it could not be strange to you
to stand in the dark and emptiness
of a city not your vision alone.
Now, I have searched the texts
and forms of cities that burned,
that decayed, or gave their children away,
have been picking at my skin,
watching my hand move,
feeling the weight and shuttle of my body,
listening with an ear as large as God's
to catch some familiar tone in my voice.
Now, I am here in your city,
trying to find that spot
where the vibration starts.
There must be some mistake.

Over the earth,
in an open space,
you and I step to the time
of another ceremony.
These people, changed,
but still ours,
shake another myth
from that egg.
Some will tell you
that beginnings are only
possible here,
that only the clamor of these drums
could bring our God to earth.
A city, like a life,
must be made in purity.

So they call you,
knowing you are intimate with stars,
to create this city, this body.
So they call you,
knowing you must purge the ground.
"Sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time,
in which the arms and tyranny of the British crown
were exerted, with every powerful effort, in order
to reduce you to a state of servitude: look back,
I entreat you, on the variety of dangers to which
you were exposed; reflect on that time, in which
every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which
even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability
to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a serious
and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential
preservation; you cannot but acknowledge, that the present
freedom and tranquility which you enjoy you have mercifully
received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of Heaven."

"Reflect on that time."
The spirits move, even
in the events of men,
hidden in a language
that cannot hide it.
You were never lost
in the language of number alone;
you were never lost
to the seed vibrating alone,
holding all contradictions within it.
"Look back, I entreat you,"
over your own painful escapes.

The seed now vibrates into a city,
and a man now walks where you walked.
Wind and rain must assault him,
and a man must build against them.
We know now, too, that the house
must take the form of a man
--warmth at his head, movement at his feet,
his needs and his shrine at his hands.
Image of shelter, image of man,
pulled back into himself,
into the seed before the movement,
into the silence before the sound
of movement, into stillness,
which may be self-regard,
or only stillness.

Recall number.
Recall your calculations,
your sight, at night,
into the secrets of stars.
But still you must exorcise this ground.
"Here was a time, in which your tender feelings
for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare,
you were then impressed with proper ideas of the
great violation of...