Philip Levine - Facts lyrics

The bus station in Princeton, New Jersey, has no men's room. I had to use one like mad, but the guy behind the counter said, "Sorry, but you know what goes on in bus station men's rooms." If you take a '37 Packard grill and split it down the center and reduce the angle by 18° and reweld it, you'll have a perfect grill for a Rolls Royce just in case you ever need a new grill for yours, I was not born in Cleveland, Ohio. Other people were, or so I have read, and many have remained, which strikes me as an exercise in futility greater even than saving your pennies to buy a Rolls. F. Scott Fitzgerald attended Princeton. A student pointed out the windows of the suite he occupied. We were on our way to the train station to escape to New York City, and the student may have been lying. The train is called "The Dinky." It takes you only a few miles away to a junction where you can catch a train to Grand Central or - if you're scared - to Philadelphia. From either you can reach Cleveland. My friend Howie wrote me that he was ashamed to live in a city whose most efficient means of escape is called "The Dinky." If he'd invest in a Rolls, even one with a Packard grill, he'd feel differently. I don't blame the student for lying, especially to a teacher. He may have been ill at ease in my company, for I am an enormous man given to long bouts of silence as I brood on facts. There are two lies in the previous stanza. I'm small, each year I feel the bulk of me shrinking, becoming more frail and delicate. I get cold easily as though I lacked even the solidity to protect my own heart. The coldest I've ever been was in Cleveland, Ohio. My host and hostess hated and loved each other by frantic turns. To escape I'd go on long walks in the yellowing snow as the evening winds raged. The citizens of Cleveland, Ohio, pa**ed me sullenly, benighted in their Rolls Royces, each in a halo of blue light sifting down from the abandoned filling stations of what once was a community. I will never return to Cleveland or Princeton, not even to pay homage to Hart Crane's lonely tower or the glory days of John Berryman, whom I loved. I haven't the heart for it. Not even in your Rolls.