(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 for Mulki, avid, able, so full of life,
  And for him who from womb to tomb
                 trod his way too soon;
Pray for Leyla, hostage to a future
                 brighter than can be said,
  And for this one, humbled and defiant if
                 broken they say;
Pray for Ilham, a beauty that will burn
                another Troy,
  And for Kamal, princely and tall and to
                reign;
Pray for Fatah, to whom Allah left
               enlightening common minds,
  And for Sahardid, gifted with what for
               so many in envy crave;
Pray for Guled, made of the rare,  born
               for the  best;
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 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!
                                                           ­           
                                -by Hakim H. Kassim.
                                 (d. May 15, 1993)