his father’s poem, “Quarry Kaleidoscope,” with its unforgettable central image: It rattles, the crusher, day out and day in, It rattles and rattles and breaks up the stone, Chews it to gravel and hour by hour Eats shovel by shovel in its guzzling maw. And those who feed it with toil and with care, They know it just eats, but will never be through. It first eats the stone and then eats them too. But it hadn’t crushed them all. A few, like the tall prisoner in the poem, had managed to outlast the machine, to keep going until the stone
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