EARTHQUAKE AND ENCELADUS

"We rely on technology and we end up thinking as human beings that we're totally safe, and we're not, ... The bottom line is we have a very unsafe planet." - Dennis S. Miletti

“QUETTA, Pakistan – A strong earthquake struck before dawn Wednesday in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 150 people, injuring scores more and leaving an estimated 15,000 homeless, officials said.
The death toll was expected to rise as reports arrived from remote areas of Baluchistan, the impoverished province bordering Afghanistan where the magnitude 6.4 quake struck.
The worst-hit area appeared to be Ziarat, where hundreds of mostly mud and timber houses had been destroyed in five villages, Mayor Dilawar Kakar said. Some homes were buried in a landslide triggered by the quake, he said.
"There is great destruction. Not a single house is intact," Kakar told Express News television.
Maulana Abdul Samad, the minister for forests in Baluchistan, said at least 150 people were confirmed to have died. Kakar said hundreds of people have been injured and some 15,000 were homeless.
"I would like to appeal to the whole world for help. We need food, we need medicine. People need warm clothes, blankets because it is cold here," Kakar said.
In the village of Sohi, a reporter for AP Television News saw the bodies of 17 people killed in one collapsed house and 12 from another. Distraught residents were digging a mass grave in which to bury them.
"We can't dig separate graves for each of them, as the number of deaths is high and still people are searching in the rubble" of many other homes, said Shamsullah Khan, a village elder.
Other survivors sat stunned in the open, with little more than the clothes in which they had been sleeping…”
By SATTAR KAKAR, Associated Press

Yet another natural disaster claiming lives, spreading destruction and distress in an area ill affording it. My mind goes back to the terror of earthquakes experienced as a child and the mythology of my ancestors generates this poem:

Enceladus

Enceladus’ sleep is sound –
His usual slumber underground
Untroubled by dark horses,
His languor soothing mighty forces.

The frightful giant sleeps
And his vengeful, hand he keeps
Relaxed, at ease, unmoving;
His mother, Earth, looks on approving.

His eye starts to move and roll;
A muscle twitches, then his body whole.
He turns, he tosses – quite disturbed
A nightmare gallops in, fury uncurbed.

The titan wakes, his tail uncurls
His mane of wild hair shakes and swirls.
He roars, and arms he stretches
The rocks above him crack, ground retches.

The earth is split
Ground quakes.
A deep dark pit
Opens, soil shakes.

The houses crumble,
Walls are rent and break –
His roar a mighty rumble,
Destruction in its wake.

His sleep disturbed, his pain
Anew awakened, goads him
And his rage in frustrated strain
He exhausts. His injured limb
He extends, and Gaia above
Him shudders; her mother’s love
In sympathy making her shudder
Like ship without a rudder.

Up, down and side to side
The ground is turned to jelly;
As Enceladus tries to hide
Deeper in his mother’s belly.

Ruin complete and utter devastation
Above him death and trepidation –
(Athena victory forswore)
All this, revenge enough for
Enceladus…

In Greek mythology, Enceladus (or Enkelados, Ἐγκέλαδος/"Trumpeter to Arms") was one of the Gigantes, the enormous children of Gaia (Earth) fertilized by the blood of castrated Ouranos. With the other Gigantes, Enceladus appeared in one particular region—either Phlegra, the "burning plain" in Thrace, or Pallene. Like the other Gigantes, Enceladus had serpent-like lower limbs, "with the scales of dragons for feet" as Bibliotheke states, though this convention was not invariably followed in pictorial representations. During the battle between the Gigantes and the Olympian gods, Enceladus was disabled by a spear thrown by the goddess Athena. He was buried on the island of Sicily, under Mount Etna. The volcanic fires of Etna were said to be the breath of Enceladus, and its tremors to be caused by him rolling his injured side beneath the mountain (similar myths are told about Typhon and Vulcan). In Greece, an earthquake is still often called a "strike of Enceladus".
At Versailles, Louis XIV's consistent iconographic theme of the triumphs of Apollo and the Olympians against all adversaries included the fountain of Enceladus in its own cabinet de verdure, which was cut into the surrounding woodland and outlined by trelliswork,; the ensemble has recently been restored (illustration). According to an engraving of the fountain by Le Pautre (1677), the sculptor of the gilt-bronze Enceladus was Gaspar Mercy of Cambrai.