Peter Werner
St. Simeon Stylites
The father of flagpole sitting
and the greatest masochist
of his era, drinking cold soup
with a knife and fork, and wearing a vest
in summer among his many austerities.
Cave dwelling and being buried to the neck
in sand - the standard severities and humiliations
of his age - cissy stuff, such sufferings
only as painful and difficult
as initiating a conversation
or Eric Rohmer’s Contes Moraux.
Froggy-voiced, and no wonder,
sitting on a 60ft. high pillar for 36 years,
he often shouted down to the crowds below,
‘After all this sitting, the services
of a chiropodist are definitely not required,’
the roars of approval greeting this remark
loud as a skateboard crashing into a tin bucket.
If alive today, Simeon would certainly get
a standing ovation from the Dublin
Haemorrhoids Society. And all thanks to
a career change forced on him when he lost
his teeth and could no longer whistle:
his head held high, superbly distainful,
like the camels of Bachtria, who alone knew
the 100th name of God.
Page(s) 96-97
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The