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When the earth breaks

MOHAMMAD BADRUL AHSAN
LORD Byron describes poetry as the lava of imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake. Forget the scientific theory and think for a minute. Every time the earth fails to write poetry, an earthquake happens. The ground shakes, buildings sway, trees tremble, waters slide, and most other things rattle. This is how a disgruntled earth likes to throw its fit. Tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes come from the rumbling belly of a grumpy beast. It may be just a coincidence, but watch it. The beast gets angry when there is no poetry.
Don't take it literally, but think of it as a metaphor. Hollow men make hollow earth, and that is when a sudden break or shift occurs in its crust. The energy radiates out seismic waves, just as the energy from a disturbance in a body of water radiates out in wave form. Poetry does the same to your mind, sending waves in rhymes, choice of words, metaphors, similes, and sheer delight. Poetry, so to speak, jolts your heart with tremors of emotions.
Seismologists say that, at any given moment, there are a number of very faint seismic waves moving all around the planet. These tremors, which aren't usually felt by humans, are known as microquakes. But then sometimes the earthquakes are strong, which jolt buildings in their foundations as roads fold, bridges collapse and the ground cracks like
brittle biscuits. Just think how it proves everything wrong, the swaggering men, their science and technology, vaunted architecture, and the vanity of manicured lawns.
All of it happens when poetry is absent, when we are overcome by vapidity and lose our ability to correspond with our souls. Can poetry change all of these? Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. " According to someone, the definition of poetry was like grasping at the wind -- once you caught it, it was no longer wind. Yet power of poetry has its own definition. It is evocative, and stirs up an intense emotion in the minds of its readers, who experience shocks and aftershocks of joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love, revelation, insight, truth, and beauty.
So it happens in a striking sequence -- hollow planet after hollow people after hollow soul. You don't see the connection? Poetry is all about feelings, every touch, every smell and every sight magnified in the enchanted mirrors of a poet's mind. Poetry idolises the earth, its resources, its beauty, the plants, flowers, birds, and bees. Poetry elevates the earth, worships it, making relevant connection between soil and soul.
When man is hollow, the earth can sense. That is why man is always the last to know before the earth rolls. The notion originated in ancient Greece around 373 BC that rats, weasels, snakes, and centipedes move to safety several days before a destructive earthquake. Dogs stop barking, some dogs hide, cats hide, horses make more noise and get restless. Sharks are reported to evacuate the reefs they cruise daily before a hurricane. And, it is said that you can tell that an earthquake is imminent when you see earthworms come out of the ground in winter. Before large earthquakes, it seems even the wind stops.
It is said that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for their wickedness.
Those two ancient cities in Palestine, located near the Dead Sea, were struck
by brimstone and fire, perhaps accompanied by earthquake, because
of the indecency and perverse sexual practices of their inhabitants. The
earth flipped as though it refused to bear their burden, as an entire civilisa-
tion slipped through a trapdoor and vanished. When people are wicked, their souls are desolate, because all emotions are rinsed out, leaving only the dry spell of instincts and impulses. That is when the soul is dislodged from the soil and the earth is alienated from people.
When God made his plans known to Abraham about the destruction of Sodom, Abraham was worried about the righteous people in the city. God then promised that he would save the city if He found ten righteous people in there. Two angels were sent to investigate, and they only decided to save Lot and his family from the impending destruction of the city. When leaving Sodom, the angels asked them not to look back, but Lot's wife didn't heed their advice. She was instantly transformed into a pillar of salt.
The biggest mystery of the moral universe is why the children, the sick, the crippled, and the innocent are killed by natural disasters, since it doesn't make the connection between sin and damnation. The earth opens to indiscriminately devour its victims just like we don't care which chicken is slaughtered when we are hungry. It happens just like the way we exterminate bugs in the house, not sparing anyone from the deadly fumes, not even the baby bugs. Innocence is absurd in human condition, because if you believe in religion you also believe that man fell on earth for redemption. Children are born with the original sin.
In earthquakes, the earth breaks and crushes human beings as if to prove that they are so hollow, life pops out in one squeeze. It happens when there is no poetry, when man is no longer capable of projecting strong feelings, when he becomes restless, fragile, and weak, when lust takes over love, information takes over wisdom, and instant takes over constant. Poetry is absent when man is impatient, when he wants to kill, not defeat
his enemy, when he wants to get, not earn his dignity, when he is in a rush to get through life without taking time to appreciate it.
The earth needs life forms for the same reason a show needs an audience. Insects crawl, birds fly, animals fight, and humans write poetry. Man must love, man must hate, his sigh and laughter, scream and cry filling the earth the way an actor is engaged on stage. Man is the most intelligent life form on earth, and he alone can express his mind, think, dream, love, and sing. He alone can produce the lava of imagination that can prevent earthquakes.
The spate of natural disasters must be telling us something. The hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, storms, and epidemics, the wrath of nature is hell-bent to destroy lives and everything man-made, as if to take his life and hurt his pride as well. Religion has it that doomsday will come when the earth will reel under the burden of vicious men. And man is vicious when he doesn't write poetry, when his emotions run dry and you can hear the clanking noise of basic instincts.
How does the earth write poetry? It doesn't write pushing pen on paper but through the lives of men who live on it. When man moves away from his natural state, nature moves away from him in equal pace until they both stand so far from each other that there is no love left. Natural calamities are earth's intense emotional response to the insensibilities of men.
Frederick Douglass, the American abolitionist, author, and ex-slave, said that it was not light that was needed, but fire, that it was not the gentle shower that was needed, but the thunder, that what was needed were storm, whirlwind, and earthquake. This is where poetry and earthquake come to a level. When man loses the power to jolt himself, earth does it for him. When the earth breaks, it breaks for him.
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.