Ode To Melancholy Poem by gershon hepner

A policy that’s based on cheer
can be a license for indifference,
from which it’s better that you veer
if you’re in favor of deliverance.

No cheerful person ever feels
the need to make the world much better;
with status quo he gladly deals
an accomplice and abettor.

In cheer do not find solace-be
depressed and somewhat melancholic;
that ought to be your policy
when cheerful with much fun you rollick.



Michael Mewshaw (“Pride and Prejudice, ” The Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 7,2000) reviews “Greene on Capri: : A Memoir, ” by Shirley Hazzard (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) . Hazzard writes that Greene was “indifferent to harm done, hurt inflicted, trust eroded, ” and while he had a wicked sense of humor, his pleasure in jokes “derived exclusively from spoofs practiced by himself on others”, However, he was just as hard on himself, holding that “a policy of good cheer was often a repudiation of feeling; a license for indifference or ruthlessness.”


2/9/00