{"id":16417,"date":"2012-07-19T05:02:18","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T10:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=16417"},"modified":"2012-07-19T05:02:18","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T10:02:18","slug":"life-is-no-goblet-to-be-drained-but-a-measure-to-be-filled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=16417","title":{"rendered":"Life is no goblet to be drained But a measure to be filled."},"content":{"rendered":"

Progress<\/strong>
\nSundays we’d stroll to the railroad track,
\nMy white-collared father and I,
\nWhere he’d gaze after freight trains billowing past
\nAnd deliver himself of a sigh\u2014<\/p>\n

“If I still worked for the railroad,
\nI’d retire with a pass. I could ride
\nTo any place in the country,
\nAnd the country, they say, is wide.”<\/p>\n

Yet for thirty years my father
\nWith fountain pen wielded power
\nAt the boiler factory in Dover,
\nKeeping track of each man-hour:<\/p>\n

He would total up columns of numbers
\nIn a flash with astonishing skill
\nAnd never a man’s pay envelope
\nFell short of a dollar bill.<\/p>\n

He would hike to the bank every Thursday
\nTo fetch payroll cash in a sack,
\nThe insurance company insisting
\nThat a blue steel pistol he pack.<\/p>\n

How the neighbors would taunt and tease him\u2014
\n“Hey, Joe, would you pull your gun
\nAnd shoot it out with that stickup man?”\u2014
\n“No, I’d throw him the money and run.”<\/p>\n

He continued to add up numbers
\nIn his head till there came on the scene
\nA formidable robot rival,
\nThe Burroughs adding machine.<\/p>\n

My father saw that his number
\nWould be up soon. As he feared,
\nAnybody could tug on a handle
\nAnd an accurate total appeared.<\/p>\n

They broke the news to him gently,
\nThey professed their profound regret
\nAnd presented him, not with a pension
\nBut a pen-and-pencil set.<\/p>\n

For a time he displayed it proudly
\nTill the pencil had to be tossed,
\nWhen it wouldn’t quite twist as it used to
\nAnd the cap of the pen got lost.<\/p>\n

For more than eight thousand mornings
\nHe had walked to his job past a sign
\nWhere the Women’s Christian Temperance
\nUnion had posted a line<\/p>\n

Ill fitting the situation
\nOf the obsolescently skilled:
\nLife is no goblet to be drained
\nBut a measure to be filled.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

X. J. KENNEDY
\nThe Sewanee Review
\nSummer 2012<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Progress Sundays we’d stroll to the railroad track, My white-collared father and I, Where he’d gaze after freight trains billowing past And deliver himself of a sigh\u2014 “If I still worked for the railroad, I’d retire with a pass. I could ride To any place in the country, And the country, they say, is wide.” Yet for thirty years my father With fountain pen wielded power At the boiler factory in Dover, Keeping track of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-4gN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16418,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16417\/revisions\/16418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}