This is why I read poetry:

I read poetry in school because I had to. Poems like The Solitary Reaper, Charge of The Light Brigade, Casabianca and Daffodils. I read them to pass the exams. Poetry, and indeed literature, was not considered as important as the science subjects because for the Indian parent what you studied was measured against its potential usefulness in your career. So I did Math and joined advertising.

But poetry’s charm must have remained over the years despite the grown-ups’ best efforts to downplay its value. Now I’ve got poetry books lying around the house, like something you need at hand’s reach in an emergency, like an asthma patient’s inhaler.

Here’s a bit from Wordsworth’s Daffodils that we had to ‘by-heart’ (the Tamilian expression to memorise something, used frequently by teachers and parents alike.)

‘For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.’

I’ve always wondered what it was about poetry that draws me to it. It’s different from any other form of writing that flows logically and at the end of which there’s a clear resolution. It used to annoy me that I sometimes couldn’t ‘understand’ a poem. Some just left me hanging, like I was missing something the writer was trying to convey. I’ve stopped worrying about that now. I just read and allow the words to wash over me, and let it do what it will. Sometimes a poem would ‘reveal’ itself on a second or third reading. And then it feels like the sun has broken through the clouds.

Here’s an extract from a poem called Field Guide by Tony Hogland that doesn’t require any explanation:

‘Once in the cool blue middle of a lake

up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-grey, curled upwards pigeon feather

floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragon fly,

like a blue-green bobby pin,

Hovered over it, then lit and rested

That’s all.’

I was telling a friend the other day that I think a poem is closer to a painting than to prose. It creates images in your head. It could be about mundane everyday life, or it could be profound; it could be about the passion of love and loss or it could soar to spiritual heights. Deborah Alma says — ‘poems are about what it means to be human, to live and love and get up in the morning.‘ That works for me.

Could anything other than a poem convey that we are, with all our imperfections, insecurities and neuroses, ‘enough’ the way we are?

This is Love After Love, by Derek Walcott:

‘The time will come when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self,

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.’

I have been reading the Bible all my life. And a lot of it is poetry. My favourite passages are from the Psalms, mostly written by that singer-songwriter David. But let me reproduce for you an excerpt from the book of Ecclesiastes written 3000 years ago. It’s attributed to David’s son, the wise King Solomon in his last years as he takes stock of life. If the words sound familiar it’s because Pete Seeger and then The Byrds brought them into popular culture in the song Turn Turn Turn.

‘To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.’

My father died last month, on December 7th, after a brief illness, at the age of 96. All his children, the five of us, were around him when the end came. It’s hard to capture the sense of loss of a loved one, except maybe through a poem.

Here is Remember by Christina Rosetti:

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land,

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann’d:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

I’ve been looking for a poem I read long ago that I’ve not been able to find since. It’s about two kids in wartime England, a boy and a girl, who answer the call for boats of any kind desperately needed to rescue British soldiers stranded on the shores of France. They make the dangerous journey across the Channel in their tiny fishing vessel and return with a boatload of weary soldiers, making their way in the dark through a storm, back to England, and safety, ‘captained by the spirit of Nelson.’ If you recognise it and find it do send it to me.

That’s the beauty of a good poem. The images remain, the words resonate and the story lingers long after you have read it. And in some small way, it changes you.