City Memes, see PPH's blog and others...

The City stands on the edge of the great chasm where the thousand steps begin the spiral down into the void. It is the City of the Black Moon: the husk of the world that fell before the present Moon arose, and the walls of its hollow habitations are grey and freckled like a plague-boy’s face. Men come there rarely in these latter years to seek the steps, and the thin trees that ring the chasm, are like the eyelashes of that great eye that lies in the heart of the world. Men press through the trees like tears flowing upward, un-naturally, briefly, and sorrowfully. There the wind between the trees is the lamentation of Dragons, and the chimes that swing in the branches are formed from the bones of that finger, that each traveller must pay to pass.

From the Scroll called The Yarrow of the White Peacock
Aphorism 11: “The City” Trans. Professor N. Wagstaff 1968.Shang-hi Mission.