Poetry: Ketaki Datta (Tagore Special)

Ketaki Datta

Rabindranath Tagore: Our Last Refuge

 

O bard of Bengal!

Where are you, in these troubled times?

Where would you like to be

 in these oppressed moments?

What would you advise us to do

 in these black hours of despair?

Once you declared with flawless humility,

 “Those who are vitiating your ambience,

 Those who are snuffing out your light,

 Could you ever forgive them?

 Could you love them at all?”

Believe me, I failed to stand up

 to your exhortations!

I was moved to tears to find

 the miasma of black smoke,

 darkening the rims of the horizon,

while deadly grenades detonated,

 while the new-borns swooned in their prams,

 breathing their last!

I could not keep my calm

 When I learnt of the woman

 Being raped and burnt to death

 Immediately after!

 I failed to hold my tears back,

 When the Dalit girl was tossed

 from one monster to another,

 Not just to satiate their appetite

 for female flesh,

But to commodify herself,

Though money forgot to change hands!

 

O Poet of the Universe,

 Be here amidst us now,

 Make us a bit more humane,

 Purifying us with your magical words,

Illumining our world with your unfailing wisdom

 

Bio: Ketaki Datta [Ph.D] is an Associate Professor in English of a Govt. College, Kolkata, India, to be precise. She is a novelist, translator, book reviewer [with Compulsive Reader, USA, and Muse India, Hyderabad, India], and a poet. She has two novels, “A Bird Alone” and “One Year for Mourning”, the last being published by Partridge Publishing Co. USA. Her book of poems, “Across the Blue Horizon” was published by Feedaread Publishing, U.K. aided by Arts Council, England. Her latest book of poems with Prof. Wilfried Raussert has been published from Germany titled, “Urban Reflections: A Dialogue in Poetry and Photography”. Her translated novels are three in number, “The Last Salute” being published from Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, India. She has academic books to her credit too. She went to Lisbon, Oxford and Univ of California [Santa Barbara] to present her research papers on invitation.

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Tagore Special :: Setu, May 2022