Beauty of the world, don’t we so belong?
Say–oh, say it to my beating heart!
Or, if in too much nerve you can’t,
Just jump, jump onto me so fast!
Angel in spring, don’t you see my heart torn
wide open,
Unable with life’s turmoil to cope–
A living testimony of the ways
By which one finger alone doesn’t wash a face!
Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, the poet was raised in a politically prominent family; yet in his early teens, the poet and his family emigrated to the United States, where the poet lived for nearly two decades. Kassim started writing and publishing poetry at a relatively young age while still in junior college, and almost spontaneously fell-in with poets and poems, and has so been ever since; particularly the Romantic poets–William Wordsworth, George Gordon, Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy Shelley–drew his attention and engaged hìs intellect, so much so that, to this day, they represent more or less ‘the epitome’ of what Poesy means to him.The poet now lives in his land of birth and works as a freelance journalist and writer. Kassim is currently preparing manuscript of what he hopes to be his first book of poetry; the poet feels a particular attachment to John Keats and Percy Shelley for their vehement opposition to the inhumane effects on ordinary people such as the consequences of industrial development in their lifetimes–and reminds us that technological progress today does the same: ‘Weep, for the world is wrong!’ (emphasis supplied) (Percy Shelley, “Dirge”)