A Pickup Truck at Twenty Miles (Richard Feynman)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
The mixture wants two things
that hate each other
held together
by a man
who believes
in the specific prayer
you say
before you light
what you've built

He recites the poem
the way my grandmother
recites the shopping list —
not because the words
are holy
but because the saying of them
is the last thing
you do
before the doing
and the last thing
is always
a kind of sacred

The arroyo
smells like burnt sugar
and something
the periodic table
keeps in the back room
and his hands —
his hands
have no degree
His hands
have read
every explosion
they've survived
and the reading
was the education

[Chorus]
The fuel wants to leave
the way all fuel wants to leave —
violently
upward
toward the thing
it was mixed to reach

And the prayer
wants the same direction
And the man
standing between the prayer
and the fuel
cannot tell
which one
is pushing harder

[Verse 2]
He rented the rooms
to bohemians only —
the ad said
no mundane souls
which is the most honest
rental listing
in the history
of California real estate

The mansion
had a statue of the goat-god
in the bedroom
and swords on the wall
and a science fiction writer
in the spare room
who would later
steal his money
and his woman
and build a church
from the parts
he couldn't carry

The neighbours
on Millionaire's Row
called the police
about the jazz
The police came
and the man
mentioned his laboratory
at the institute
and the police
left
because a man
with a laboratory
cannot be
the same man
with the goat-god
in the bedroom

But he was
He was both
the laboratory
and the bedroom
and the fuel
was always
a mixture
of the two

[Bridge]
The arroyo
where they tested the engines
is the same arroyo
where the space agency
keeps its robots now

They don't mention him
on the tour
They don't recite
the poem to the goat-god
before they launch
the rovers
toward the red planet

But the fuel —
the specific formula
that a man
with no diploma
mixed by hand
in the canyon
where the scrub oak
caught fire regularly
and the catching fire
was the data —

that fuel
still burns
inside the things
we send
to touch
what he prayed to

[Final Chorus]
The fuel wants to leave
and the prayer wants to leave
and the man
who mixed them
in a garage
at the end
of Millionaire's Row
left
the loudest way
a man can leave —

the workshop floor
the fulminate
the last experiment
at thirty-seven
which was either
an accident
or a prayer
that finally
answered itself

And the arroyo
still smells
like burnt sugar
and the space
between a formula
and an incantation
which is
no space at all
if you believe
hard enough
in both directions
simultaneously

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