Formalism

A rigorous formal challenge is a useful exercise for any poet although it can be taken to such extremes that it is rendered somewhat pointless.

What I thought I'd try to do, and have just done, is write a 26-line poem in which the lines begin with a,b,c, in alphabetical order and end with z,y,x in reverse order and have 10 syllables per line.
Why, I don't know. But here it is, anyway.

An A-Z of Music and back again

A saxophonist who liked to play some jazz
Before bedtime, at the end of the day,
Couldn’t, for some strange reason, find his sax,
Didn’t know where it was, although he knew,
Even though he’d lent it to some spiv,
For one night only, and, in fact, in lieu-
God only knows why- of some short-term debt
He owed. So had to go to bed, undress
In silence that night, jazzless, and under
Just a bit of duress, but PDQ,
Keeping his socks on so that he could slip
Lightly out of bed to fetch his kazoo
Meanwhile if he could formulate a plan,
Not giving up hope of his late-night jam,
Only if he was he able to recall
Perhaps if it was in among the stack,
Quaintly kept from when he was a D.J.,
Roughly somewhere behind his old hi-fi
So that is where he first began his search.
Then, in the midnight hour, he was agog,
Unsurprisingly, for it was as if
Very lucky for him a love supreme
Was looking after him for there he found
Xylophones and the means to make music
You couldn’t have imagined. Here’s the rub-
Zestfully, he played excerpts from opera.