रुकावट के लिए खेद है

Interrupting regular programming on a Sunday to bring you something slightly different. As you might imagine, a large proportion of traffic on this page is likely to be ghazal-led (partly because of familiarity, largely on account of popularity). Given that my limited abilities will mean I will end up playing fast and loose with an established format, just wanted to convey my heartfelt apologies in advance and share John Hollander’s wonderful Ghazal (on the ghazal) as a quick reminder that the ghazal in its purest format has rules that talentless anarchists like me struggle with

For couplets the ghazal is prime; at the end
Of each one’s a refrain like a chime: “at the end.”

But in subsequent couplets throughout the whole poem,
It’s this second line only will rhyme at the end

One such a string of strange, unpronounceable fruits,
How fine the familiar old lime at the end! 

All our writing is silent, the dance of the hand,
So that what it comes down to’s all mime, at the end.

Dust and ashes? How dainty and dry! We decay
To our messy primordial slime at the end.

Two frail arms of your delicate form I pursue,
Inaccessible, vibrant, sublime at the end.

You gathered all manner of flowers all day,
But your hands were most fragrant of thyme, at the end.

There are so many sounds! A poem having one rhyme?
—A good life with sad, minor crime at the end.

Each new couplet’s a different ascent: no great peak,
But a low hill quite easy to climb at the end.

Two armed bandits: start out with a great wad of green
Thoughts, but you’re left with a dime at the end.

Each assertion’s a knot which must shorten, alas.
This long-worded rope of which I’m at end.

Now Qafia Radif has grown weary, like life,
At the same he’s been wasting his time at. THE END.