Ghazal Poetry
Top Ghazal Poems
Tonight
by Agha Shahid Ali
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates— A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
Ali's 'Tonight' blends personal anguish with political displacement, showing how the Ghazal can hold both the personal and the universal in its elegant arms.
Even the Rain
by Agha Shahid Ali
What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain? But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain.
A haunting example of refrain magic, where each couplet stabs deeper into longing and grief.
Ghazal
by Adrienne Rich
The cloud and the mountain, the mountain and the cloud— I am neither, I am both, I am neither cloud nor mountain.
Rich channels the Ghazal's introspective side, exploring selfhood and contradiction with lyrical precision.
Ghazal
by John Hollander
You who are the source of all my desires, Grant me the grace of your presence tonight.
Hollander's classical approach stays true to the Ghazal's formal beauty, painting a portrait of yearning devotion.