New Mexico Quarterly
Volume 24 | Issue 4
Article 14
1954
Are We Then So Serious?
Lysander Kemp
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Recommended Citation
Kemp, Lysander. "Are We Then So Serious?." New Mexico Quarterly 24, 4 (1954). http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol24/iss4/
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Kemp: Are We Then So Serious?
NMQ
POETRY
SE~ECTIONS
44 1
ARE WE THE N SO SE RI 0 US?
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
(A dull head among windy spaces)
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
(April is the cruellest month)
He wept that he was ever born, ,
(I should have been a pair of ragged claws)
And he had reasons.
(This is cactus land)
Miniver loved the days of old
(J erusalem Athens Alexandria)
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
(The horses under the axletree)
The vision of a warridr bold
(Knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass)
•
Would set him dancing.
(Here we go round the prickly pear)
Miniver sighed for what was not,
(Where are the eagles and the trumpets?)
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
'"
(With the smoke coming down above the housetops)
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot
(I who have sat by Thebes below the wall)
And Priam' 5 neighbors.
(When Agamemnon cried aloud)
mou~he
reno~
ripe
Miniver
(8uried beneath some snow-deep Alp)
That made so many a name so fragrant;
. (Talking of Michelangelo)
;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
(The epileptic o~ the bed)
And Art, a vagrant. '
(Gathering fuel in vacant lors)
Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1954
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New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 24 [1954], Iss. 4, Art. 14
'.~
44 2
NMQ
POETRY
SELECTIONS
Miniver loved the Medici,
\
(Lucretia Borgia shall be my bride)
Albeit he had never seen one;
'" passages)
.(History ha\many cunning
He would have sinned incess;ntly
. (Are these ideas right orrong?)
Could he have been one. '
(They were together, and he fell)
It
/
Miniver cursed the commonplace
(A broken spring in a factory yard)
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
(My necktie rich and modest)
He missed the medieval grace
(I shall wear white flannel trousers)
Of iron clothing
.
~eadpiece filled with straw. Alasl)
Miniver scorned the gold he sought
(I shall not want Capital in; Heaven)
But sore annoyed was he without it;
(And the jew squats on the windowsill, the owner)
Miniver thought and thought and thought
(What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?)
And thought about it.
(The jew is underneath the lot)
Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
, (In this valley of broken stars)
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
(Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season)
Miniver coughed and called it fate,
(Do I dare disturb the upiverse?)
And kept on drinking.
(Shantih shantih shantih)
LYSANDI!R
http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol24/iss4/14
KEMP
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