The shining poet Dr Augustine Cruze of this suntanned earth has endeavored a lot to present his verses to the world of ours covering the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern hemisphere weaving enormous Bengali words of verse through his following anthologies –
1) Amar Jonmo hoeche bolei ( Because I am born)
2) Emon jodi Hoto (Had it been like this)
3) Bidhatar Ichche (God willing) and
4) Tobey tai hoke (Then let it be like that).
Here I quote a few lines of the first book of verse,
“I got a name because I am born”
“Amar Jonmo hoeche bolei amar ekta nam achhe
Amar namey amar gunaguner bichare amar porichoy achhe
Ami onubhob kori ami manus namey khyato
Amar dehangey bismoy rohoshye karjokaron rohoshyo
srostatey proshno rakhi…”
“ … I got a name because I am born
I have been introduced with my qualities against my name
I feel that I am famous for my name
There’s mystery in my body for the reason why
I question my Creator…”
Here’s quoted another poem:
(He Ishwor tumi kemon)
“How do you look O God?”
Even I couldn’t see your shadow under your sway
I couldn’t discern your foot-print
while you walk on the desert way, how is it,
I couldn’t see you ever travelling river-lane by boat
I couldn’t see you riding the chariot
resisting the meteor fall
In the winter mist and in the mid-night spring
I didn’t find you walking
Even you didn’t speak
anything of your thought to my ear
Merely some Godly words, I assume here and there
pell-mell you put in my ear
as it were, you are my breath…
As it were I am not in my breath
He is, as it were, the Great Power
Somewhere evanesced as the single soul
Where the existence of life remains
That’s the existence of algae
Where light’s ray touches life
Where human beings spring forth
with youth and age regenerate
by creation and destruction in eternity
and indestructible time carried them on
and on its own axis
and I myself, as it were, emotionally,
stay indestructible!
That You are in me existing eternity
flowing unseen under your sway
You got no youth, no age,
and without beginning and end
Having no birth history You remain alone
Merely You are the Architect
of creation and destruction
and you are ever my eternal companion
To me, without You everything remains
imaginary fabricated and fictitious.
(Translated by M Mizanur Rahman)
Every living being on earth is helpless at the clutch of nature. Hence the poet Dr Augustine Cruze of the anthology “Emon Jodi Hoto (Had it been like that)” has very clearly woven a very good poem, ‘Matir keet ami (I am the worm of the soil):
…Sometimes I think beyond any measure
that my father was made of earth’s juice.
My father brings me up also by earth’s juice.
