Past Perfect: In a Dry Country

042

Although regarded by many as a consummate New Yorker, Donald Robert Perry Marquis (1878–1937), newspaper columnist and author of about 30 books, was actually a physician’s son from the small town of Walnut, Illinois. After stints as a chicken plucker, railroad section hand and schoolteacher in the rural Midwest, Marquis landed a job at the Census Bureau in Washington, DC, where he also found part-time work at the Washington Times newspaper. He soon headed for New York and was hired by the Evening Sun, where he produced a daily column called “The Sun Dial.” In 1916 he introduced his readers to Archy, a cockroach with the soul of a poet, who each night cranked out commentaries on politics, the Manhattan social scene and the plight of the working man by throwing himself down—head first—on the keys of Marquis’s typewriter. Since he was unable to work the shift key and capitalize letters, Archy’s free-verse reports have an idiosyncratic charm. Together with his foil Mehitabel, a seductive alley cat who traced her transmigrated soul’s lineage back to Cleopatra, Archy roams the city during the Roaring Twenties and more cynical Thirties and returns to the newsroom to file his dispatches. In the verse that follows, Archy ruminates on things archaeological following a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That Don Marquis could tap into such reservoirs of whimsy was remarkable, in light of his tragic personal life: He buried two children and two wives—the second committing suicide when Marquis was gravely ill with a stroke. Like his creation, Archy, Marquis clearly saw “life from the underside” but recognized that the “only way to live with it is to laugh at it.” The following poem is excerpted from Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis, copyright 1927 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

043

Archy interviews a pharaoh

boss i went
and interviewed the mummy
of the egyptian pharaoh
in the metropolitan museum
as you bade me to

what ho
my regal leatherface
says i

greetings
little scatter footed
scarab
says he

kingly has been
says i
what was your ambition
when you had any

insignificant
and journalistic insect
says the royal crackling
in my tender prime
i was too dignified
to have anything as vulgar
as ambition
the ra ra boys
in the seti set
were too haughty
to be ambitious
we used to spend our time
feeding the ibeses
and ordering
pyramids sent home to try on
but if i had my life
to live over again
i would give dignity
the regal razz
and hire myself out
to work in a brewery

old tan and tarry
says i
i detect in your speech
the overtones
of melancholy

yes i am sad
says the majestic mackerel
i am as sad
as the song
of a soudanese jackal
who is wailing for the blood red
044moon he cannot reach and rip

on what are you brooding
with such a wistful
wishfulness
there in the silences
confide in me
my imperial pretzel
says i

i brood on beer
my scampering whiffle snoot
on beer says he

my symphathies
are with your royal
dryness says i

my little pest
says he
you must be respectful
in the presence
of a mighty desolation
little archy
forty centuries of thirst
look down upon you
oh by isis
and by osiris
says the princely raisin
and by pish and phthush and phthah
by the sacred book perembru
and all the gods
that rule from the upper
cataract of the nile
to the delta of the duodenum
i am dry
i am as dry
as the next morning mouth
of a dissipated desert
as dry as the hoofs
of the camels of timbuctoo
little fussy face
i am as dry as the heart
of a sand storm
at high noon in hell
i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
and gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer

divine drouth
says i
imperial fritter
continue to think
there is no law against
that in this country
old salt codfish
if you keep quiet about it
not yet

what country is this
asks the poor prune

my reverend juicelessness
this is a beerless country
says i

well well said the royal
desiccation
my political opponents back home
always maintained
that i would wind up in hell
and it seems they had the right dope

and with these hopeless words
the unfortunate residuum
gave a great cough of despair
and turned to dust and debris
right in my face
it being the only time
i ever actually saw anybody
put the cough
into sarcophagus

dear boss as i scurry about
i hear of a great many
tragedies in our midsts
personally i yearn
for some dear friend to pass over
and leave to me
a boot legacy
yours for the second coming
of gambrinus

Archy

Although regarded by many as a consummate New Yorker, Donald Robert Perry Marquis (1878–1937), newspaper columnist and author of about 30 books, was actually a physician’s son from the small town of Walnut, Illinois. After stints as a chicken plucker, railroad section hand and schoolteacher in the rural Midwest, Marquis landed a job at the Census Bureau in Washington, DC, where he also found part-time work at the Washington Times newspaper. He soon headed for New York and was hired by the Evening Sun, where he produced a daily column called “The Sun Dial.” In 1916 he introduced his […]