The Origin of Cities

The goddess of cities forbids indolence. She is first seen dancing which is a figure not for art or prayer or the arousal of desire but for action simply; her breastband is copper, her crown imitates the city walls. Though she draws us to her, like a harbor or a rivermouth she sends us away. A figure of the outward. So the old men grown lazy in patrician ways lay out cash for adventures. Imagining a rich return, they buy futures and their slaves haunt the waterfront for news of ships. The young come from the villages dreaming. Pleasure and power draw them. They are employed to make inventories and grow very clever, multiplying in their heads, deft at the use of letters. When they are bored, they write down old songs from the villages and the cleverest make new songs in the old forms describing the pleasures of the city, their mistresses, old shepherds and simpler times. And the temple where the farmer grandfathers of the great merchants worshipped, the dim temple across from the market which was once a clearing in the forest, the place where the nightwatch pisses now against a column in the moonlight, is holy to them; the wheat mother their votress of sweaty sheets, of what is left in the air when her glimpsed beauty turns the corner, of love's punishment and the wracking of desire. They make songs about that. They tell stories of heroes and brilliant lust among the gods. These are amusements. She dances, the ships go forth, the slaves and peasants labor in the fields, maimed soldiers ape monkeys for coins outside the wineshops, the craftsmen work in bronze and gold, accounts are kept carefully, what goes out, what returns.