POEM OF THE DAY
Stylites
In the desert,
where the bones of god have been flensed
by the sickles of deep time,
a pillar stands;
great fluted drums of battered marble
stacked high.
On the pillar
a hermit
makes his stand.
Knee cocked, arms akimbo
he makes the sign
of the hooked cross
a contortion
of his chastised flesh.
Once a saint of the earth,
a wanderlost patriot in the holy land,
a serial redeemer
sauntering to salvation,
he sifted the dust of the road
between his toes,
spieling out footnotes in sand.
Come into his reckoning,
come into his kingdom,
having assumed the vertical,
his soul made simple,
the hermit need only
stand and watch.
Simon says,
give me a pillar
and I will stop the world.
The hermit contemplates
his dominion.
The kingdom is in the eye
of this beholder.
As the bones of the vanquished foe
are crushed under the wheels
of Pharoah's chariot,
the landscape is crushed
under his pitiless gaze.
Under the weather of this eye
there is no relief in the land
even for stone.
Simon says,
Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair.
Lift up your eyes:
There he stands,
between heaven and earth
splendid in his rags
as Solomon sitting in judgement
arrayed like a peacock,
looking down at you
with a hatred more tender than true love.
Dana Pattillo
SIMEON STYLITES, ST (390—459), the first and most famous of the Pillar-hermits was born in N. Syria. After having been expelled from a monastery for his excessive austerities, at thirty years of age he built a pillar six feet high on which he took up his abode. He made new pillars higher and higher, till after ten years he reached the height of sixty feet. On this pillar he lived for thirty years without ever descending. A railing ran round the capital of the pillar, and a ladder enabled his disciples to take him the necessaries of life. From his pillar he preached and exercised a great influence, converting numbers of heathen and taking part in ecclesiastical politics. The facts would seem incredible were they not vouched for by Theodoret, who knew him personally (Historia religiosa, c. 26). Moreover, Simeon had many imitators, well authenticated Pillar-hermits being met with till the 16th century.
The standard work on the subject is Les Stylites (1895), by H. Delehaye, the Bollandist; for a summary see the article “Saulenheilige,” in Herzog’s Realencyklopadie (ed. 3). On Simeon see Th. NOldeke’s Sketches from Eastern History (1892), p. 210, and the Dictionary of Christian Biography.
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1911
Read "ST. SIMEON STYLITES," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
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