The growing feeling of growing old |
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. **** 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 |