common lisp cons creates a list from two symbols, clojure cons requires a seq to cons onto?

(Disclaimer - I'm aware of the significance of Seqs in Clojure)

In common lisp the cons function can be used to combine two symbols into a list:

(def s 'x)
(def l 'y)
(cons s l)

In clojure - you can only cons onto a sequence - cons hasn't been extended to work with two symbols. So you have to write:

(def s 'x)
(def l 'y)
(cons s '(l))

Is there a higher level pattern in Clojure that explains this difference between Common LISP and Clojure?