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.”