Why do we read poetry? And what does it awaken in us? Perhaps we turn to poems the way we turn to a prayer or a strand of light. Perhaps we evoke our roots at the foot of a poem that grows into our mind. Perhaps we turn to poetry by the same impulse by which man gave birth to god. Standing on this side of the Arabian Sea by the Coast of Malabar, as a child, I stubbornly believed that the hazy grey line I saw far away on the horizon was the island country of Sri Lanka. The...