(to Amal)
Musical Child of May, spirit fierce and fair!
Born to Spring when the cricket cheers, or
Drowsy nightingale weeps in melody, to beget
A new breed that in future glory may rhyme–
Here to the twenty, and a thousand to come,
Of all your soft and moon-lit mid-May eves.
Strange how much change the passing day
reveals,
Stranger yet how your heart, sweet child,
stays in love; ever-truer,
Blind to what was or will be said. Glow!
MayChild of that immortal season, ancient
friend
To Hyades that forever mourn and weep
for their slain.
Pray, MayChild, to lift a lowered world
up to a higher ground:
Pray, MayChild, for mean and hateful were not
said of you–
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth!
Tender Star of May, beauty blessed before her
birth!
Rich and loyal in love, as some are not,
Forget not: the ways of the world are not
those of love:
In a rugged world where brutes tread
their petty ways of hate,
They break the heart that shows love in full faith;
Venus, who versed you well in perfumed
gardens of Spring,
Knew that men’s promise and trust vanish with
the fleeting hour:
Consider Echo who, for love sincere, became but
a faint voice–
Consider one might not be so loved by whom one
loves so deep!
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”)