Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CAUSE OF THE EARTHQUAKE AT NISHAPUR, by FASIHI KHVAFI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CAUSE OF THE EARTHQUAKE AT NISHAPUR, by                    
First Line: Through the shakes and the knocks of the earthquake
Last Line: His eyes did pray?
Subject(s): Disasters; Earthquakes; Religion; Theology


Through the shakes and the knocks of the earthquake
shocks it is upside down and awry,
So that 'neath the Fish is Arcturus sunk, while the
fish is raised to the sky.
That fury and force have run their course, and its
buildings are overthrown,
And riven and ruined are whole and part, and the
parts asunder strown.
Not in worship, I ween, are its chapels seen with
spires on the ground low lying,
While the minarets stoop or bend in a loop, but not at
the bedesmen's crying.
The libraries are all upside down, and the colleges
all forsaken,
And the Friday Mosque in ruins is laid, and the pulpits
are shattered and shaken.
Yet do not suppose that this ruin arose from the town's
ill destiny,
But ask of me if thou fain wouldst see the wherefore
of this and the why.
'Twas because the Lord had such high regard for this
old and famous place
that He turned His gaze on its fashions and ways with the
eyes of favor and grace,
And such was the awe which His glance inspired, and
His Light's effulgent rays
That with shaking feet to earth it fell for fear of that
awful blaze.
For did not the Mountain of Sinai once fall down and
crumble away
Which Moses stood, and the Face of God to behold with
his eyes did pray?






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