FINAL MOMENTS—a ghazal

Note: if you are not familiar with ghazal as a form of poetry, it might be helpful if you first read the explanatory note given towards the end.

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FINAL MOMENTS—a ghazal


Now I just cannot sing more.
To you joy I can’t bring more.

In the winter of my life
There can’t be yet a spring more.

Grounded I am for ever,
I cannot take to wing more.

My life’s violin is rusted,
I can’t play on the string more.

Though you love me, in your arms,
No, now I cannot swing more.

There is hardly much distance
Between me and the King more.

Khalish in final moments,
To life I will not cling more.



* A ghazal is characterized by couplets in which the last 1-3 words of both lines of the first couplet and each second line of the subsequent couplets are repeated as refrain [called radeef], while the word immediately preceding the refrain has to be a rhyming one and is called kaafia.

For a detailed note on ghazal, please see "WHAT IS A GHAZAL AND HOW TO WRITE IT?" 

Please note that each couplet in a ghazal is supposed to be complete poem in itself, rather like a three line haiku. Though modern ghazal writers often tend to have a continuous theme through various couplets, this is by no means necessary or required.


M C Gupta
3 October 2004
www.writing.com/authors/mcgupta44