Poem: As You Like It (The Hermit)

Through the magic of Twitter, I recently met Prabhu Iyer, a poet in Chennai (India). Among his many compelling works is a Hermit cycle that succinctly encapsulates the eremitical impulse and mindset. He has graciously given me permission to post a movement I particularly like here, and so I'm sharing it with you.

The envoi alone could serve as the motto on the Great Seal of the Nation of Seekers, if we had such regalia.


AS YOU LIKE IT (THE HERMIT)
by Prabhu Iyer

Let the film end before intermission
characters be underdeveloped
let the plot lie open like cut veins

and let the background score
resonate in the hall at its shrill note

It's a broken piece of the heart
cracked into two:
two faces reside here now
on either sides of the chasm.

Make whatever you wish out of it
Sweet or bitter end,
tragedy, comedy or farce
or thriller or horror,
write your own story, make it up.

take any road up the hill
to eternity beyond.


(Скит [Hermit Dwelling], by Аполлинарий Михайлович Васнецов [Apollinary Vasnetsov], courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)