Le Voyage Magnifique

I've fallen in love with far away exotic lands,

                                        images of elephants and slow dark eyes 

beckon me to write a romantic Hindi Doha,

                                        join me in invoking soft exotic sighs. 

                                                           ~~Tinker





Hindi poetry is a descendant of Sanskrit and is found primarily in the North, West and Central India. Hindi is the official language of India. The region is known for its romantic poetry.



The Doha   is a Hindi stanzaic form employing a rhyming couplet with long syllabic lines. The Doha is also used in Urdu verse. This form often steps away from the Hindi tradition of romantic verse and can be written as didactic verse or used in longer narrative verse. 

The elements of the Doha are: 

         1. stanzaic, written in any number of couplets. 

         2. syllabic, each line is made up of 24 syllables and is paused by caesura at the end of the 13th syllable, making the line two phrases of 13 and 11 syllables. The couplet can be arranged as a quatrain breaking the line at the caesura. 

         3. rhymed, aa bb cc 

         4. commonly used for proverbs and/or for longer narratives or didactic poetry. 



Vanquished in the Night 

The starless night drops down into the silent forest,

                   small creatures scurry to secure safe haven.

Peerless predators with eyes accustom to the dark,

                    stalking weaker prey with guile until craven.

                                                 ~~Judi Van Gorder