Gabriel Kahane & Brooklyn Rider - The Fiction Issue: Part III lyrics

[Verse] In the early days after those planes crashed And everyone was long legs akimbo Stone-faced and somber and still I'd walk five blocks east And set myself in a seat At the twilit dive with a bearded bartender Gentle and sober and still I'd drink real slow And I'd think about the poet In his dart on 52nd His public and private tragedy Coming of age was an exchange Or so he reckoned From loving or dying To loving and lying