Featured guest

The World Poetry Cafe Radio Show  with hosts Ariadne Sawyer and Jason Lawrence were honoured to welcome Duke to the radio show. He spoke about his passion for Tagore and read a poem in English and  Bengali. We also talked about the upcoming peace festival and the two Poetic Necklace Exhibits. To LISTEN TO THE SHOW, CLICK HERE!

 The Vancouver Tagore Society is one of our esteemed partners for the World Poetry International Peace Festival. Our great thanks go out to Duke for his beautiful work with all the selected poems that you sent in  for the peace festival. He compiled them into one file and put a lovely border around them. This took him many hours but the result is beautiful and something we all can be proud of. UBC is starting to print up the poems. The gift poems are already printed and the photos were put into frames. They look amazing!

Duke Ashrafuzzaman, is one of the founder-directors, and General Secretary of the Vancouver Tagore Society. He had emigrated to Canada in 1994 from Bangladesh where he taught Computer Science in the University of Dhaka and Shahjalal University of Science and Technology. He also worked as a sports reporter for the Daily Observer and contributed regularly in the sports and science sections of weeklies Shandhani, Jai Jai Din and Mouchakey Dhil. He translated a few philosophical essays and poem. A fan of Rabindranath Tagore, and music and literature, Duke is well-known in the cultural circles of Bengali community of Lower Mainland as an active participant. For his day job, he works as a software developer with Faronics Corporation.

  AFRICA

Rabindranath Tagore

In those frenzied primeval days, when
  The Creator unsatisfied with himself
  Destroyed new creations after creations
Amidst repeated shakings of His head
In His exasperated disapprovals,
Arms of the raging sea
From the bosom of
Primordial Mother Earth
Snatched you away — Africa.

Consigned you to intimate vigil of the
Thick forests,
  Inner-quarters of miserly light.
There, in your undisturbed leisureliness
You were mustering mysteries impenetrable,
    Mastering  impregnable arcana  of
    Oceans, Lands and the Heavens.
Nature’s unseen magic webbed
 Spells on your sub-conscious.
In the guise of crudeness you
  Ridiculed the frightful,
Subdued fear of perils
  Portraying yourself hideous
     With powerful sublime grace
             Of the terrible
     In the trumpet-roars of frantic
             Dance of destruction.

Alas! The shadow-clad
   Beneath your dark veil
   Your humanity remained unknown,
In the muddled eyes of indifference.

They came with iron manacles
Their claws sharper than your wolves’
     Came hunters of humanity,
    In conceit blinder than your
Sun-bereft murky jungles.
  Civilization’s barbarous greed
    Bared its brazen bestiality.

  Your muted wails in misty forest-alleys
       Mired your earth with
       Your blood and tears
Under the spiked boots of those
   Monsters’ feet
   Horrendous lumps of mud
      Imprinted eternal smudge on

Your insulted history.
Meanwhile, on shores of the ocean

 In parishes of their villages and towns,
       Temple-bells tolled for worships
        Mornings and evenings
        In the name of their Merciful God;
Playful children frolicked in mothers’ laps;
Poet’s music played hymns
             Worshipping Beauty.

Today when the dusk looms in the
       Western horizons
        Breathless in stormy winds,
When the hyenas emerged from
       The depth of secret abyss, and
       Proclaimed the day’s end with
          Ominous unholy shrills,
Come,
     Poet of the turning age,
     Stand beneath the last rays of

        The setting sun,
        At the door of that humiliated woman,
        And plead,
           “Forgive, forgive us” —–
In the turmoil of vicious delirium
  Let these be your civilization’s
            Last noble words.

             [Translated by: Duke Ashrafuzzaman, Vancouver, BC. April 2012] (C)

    রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকু