My Lord, I ask You in their name

to carpet the world for them

with roses, if Your hands allow,

and with violets after the roses.

Love of life comes with obligation twice over; their love

comes with no obligation at all.

We walk upon their eyelids

and find our way by their hearts;

their paradise and their misery

hang on a smile from us, or a moan.

Our evening company in the world's exile,

and the choicest part of every paradise.

My Lord, I ask of You mercy,

by the face of heaven and by their faces.

You entrusted them with life,

and You were within their wombs,

and You left, of the beatings of Your heart,

one beat within their breasts.

So wipe the wounds with Your fingertips

and turn back the points of the lances,

that Your sun may rise in the morning

with every mother at peace.

Sayings About the Mother

A man once went to the noble Messenger and asked: Instruct me, O Messenger of God — shall I honor my mother more, or my father? And the noble Prophet answered: Your mother, then your mother, then your mother, then your father...

The Village Poet said: The mother is the visible side of God.

No language can express the qualities of strength, beauty, and courage contained in a mother's love. She does not shrink where man shrinks; she grows strong where his resolve weakens; and she sends out to her son, in the desert of this world, the rays of her fidelity and her devotion, like a star in the sky.

• The vision of beauty is the greatest thing in the world. And great among men is he who sees beauty in things that appear ordinary to the great mass of mankind. Tams

• I have never yet known a great man who was not at the same time a virtuous one. Franklin

• Children, like grown people, profit nothing from the experience of others.

Mama's Day — Talk of the Heart

Rise, my brother! Here is the rosy dawn stretching itself, lying down beside the light..

A shimmering apparition — no sight more beloved, none more radiant!

And our neighbor the nightingale woke before us,

rolling his wing over the hollow,

loosing his plaintive melody across the distance,

and the coquettish breeze drifts dreamily, floating in her pride!

•

Look well, my brother!..

How full of splendor it is, this morning!

As if it alone laid claim to the freshness of spring,

as if, among the days, it were an anthem...

its words... a hymn and a prayer,

its melody... a murmuring and a cooing..

How lovely it is!.. It is "Mama's Day!"

•

The carnation on the balcony has bared a gleaming brow and cheek!

Its perfume breathes out, in innocence;

it gazes coyly, as though it, too, in secret, kept a tryst with us!

•

Come, my brother! The little gift is wrapped and ready,

we lift it up to Mama —

we carry her coffee to her bed,

we surprise her with our lips, with kisses,

she crowns her hair with the white carnation,

and at the clamor of our happiness she opens her eyes,

and eyes answer eyes with the great joy..

on "Mama's Day"....