The Nature-Fakir’s Dream

Out of the forest depth there came

     A thing of monstrous size;

It had no tail it had no legs

     It had no ears or eyes.

It had no teeth, it had no mouth,

     It had no cheek or nose;

It had no fins with which to swim,

     It had no feet or toes.

It was devoid of trunk or head,

     ‘Twas neither straight nor crooked;

It neither walked nor crept nor crawled,

     And hideous it looked.

It had no wings with which to fly,

     No lungs with which to roar;

And yet it plunged along the ground,

     Straight to the fakir’s door.

It seized him in its awful grasp

     And opened wide its jaws;

It tossed him high into the air,

     And slashed him with its paws.

It flung him miles and miles through space,

     And caught him at a bound;

Then swallowed him and disappeared

     Ten miles beneath the ground.

                Envoy

Now all good story tellers please

     Take warning from this verse;

If you can’t tell them as they are

     Don’t make them any worse.

 

May 13, ‘08

 A fakir, or faqir (/fəˈkɪər/; Arabic (noun of faqr)), derived from faqr (Arabic:  "poverty"), is a Muslim Sufi ascetic in the Middle East and South Asia. The Faqirs were wandering Dervishes teaching Islam and living on alms.

   The term has become a common Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi byword for beggar. Faqirs were Muslim ascetics and Sufis who have taken vows of poverty and worship, renounce all relations and possessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir

A fakir or faqir (Arabic) is a Sufi who performs feats of endurance or apparent magic.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir_(disambiguation)