Lyrics: Who Knows Where The Time Goes

From: Carl Malmgren, January 22, 2019

Some ruminations, around the time of her birthday.

“WKWTTG?”: Wherein the incredible power of the song?  Of course in the plaintive melody and the plangent voice.  But also in the lyrics.  I have long thought that the wonderful words of that preternaturally wise young woman (was she still a teen when she wrote them?) bear closer examination.

                    Sandy Denny, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving

Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time
For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Part I; This is a song comprised of questions, with a total of eight questions in it, including the title.  The repeated question—who knows where the time goes?—is, of course, rhetorical.  A rhetorical question is one that we need not answer because the answer is obvious to everyone.  In this case, everyone knows that no one knows where the time goes—it disappears.  We inevitably lose (track of) time.  It slips by unnoticed and unremarked.  But, as Paul de Man reminds us, a rhetorical question need not be rhetorical at all, but rather literal; it may well be that the speaker truly wishes to identify someone who knows where the time goes, who knows what happens to it.  And then the speaker proceeds to tell us exactly who knows—she does.  She knows that it evaporates; it disappears; it passes.  She makes that clear in each and every stanza. The birds, the seasons, even the fire continually remind her that time is passing.  The question then becomes, what can we do about the passage of time?  This is a song about a person who feels time slipping away but who is unperturbed because she has the wherewithal to deal with it. 

Part II: The song begins with birds.  Appropriately enough, because birds are good markers of time; they count time by marking the seasons for us. They fly south in the winter, then north in the summer.  The speaker is in a quandary.  How can the birds know time so well: “how can they know it’s time for them to go?”  The first version of the song had them leaving across the purple sky, the second across the morning sky.  Purple is colorful, but morning is better since it is a marker of time.  Evening is even better than morning, because it better denotes the passage of time, the end of time, the time when time slips away, just like the birds.  Of course the speaker sits and dreams before the winter fire (both time markers) because winter is when the birds leave and because winter is the seasonal analogue of evening.  Those same birds prove to be “fickle friends” (a personification and an alliteration) of the shore in stanza two, friends who submit to the whims of time, but now their timing is a matter of fact, not a question: “it’s time for them to go.”  The birds complete the cycle of time by returning in stanza three.

Part III: This is a song about the inevitable passage of time.  The word time is repeated 12 times (counting the title), invariably accompanied by a verb of movement (goes, leaves, comes).  The speaker says she “does not count the time,” but perhaps her listeners do, remembering that we use the word time to denote repetition (one time, two times) and thus to count time.  Or when we hear, "Drink up now, it's time."  The question then becomes, how does she deal with the inexorable passage of time?  The stanzas tell us that the speaker is immune in some ways to its passage.  The fire may burn and thus pass away, but she is still and dreaming: she has “no thought of time” because she stands outside of it.  In stanza two, she admits to resisting the passage of time.  She “will still be here” or be here still, quietly ensconced in a space outside of time; she has “no thought of leaving” (what do trees do in winter? they buckle to the demands of time and lose leaves).  In stanza three she acknowledges the inevitable march of time, “So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again,” but she claims that they do not touch her—she has no fear of them.

Part IV: She doesn’t think of time, count time, fear time, even though she is preternaturally aware of its passage.  The question then becomes, how can this be so?  The answer to that comes in the first two sentences of stanza three: “I am not alone while my love is near me; I know it will be so until it’s time to go.” The presence of her love insulates her from the passage of time.  Time goes, but love remains and grows; such is the magic power of love.  Her love and she have created a space where time does not enter, does not count.  Love is thus the antidote to the ravages of time. 

            
Love enables her to escape time, but only until time makes its inevitable demand: “it’s time to go.”  There comes a time when we must all go.  We pass away, we pass on, we pass.  But the speaker does not leave us defenseless to the inroads of time: “I am not alone while my love is near me.” “My love” can refer to a person.  But it also can refer to an activity, one that the speaker clearly loves.  To singing.  To singing a particular song. What does she leave behind for us as a refuge from time?  Why, the song itself, which escapes time by becoming timeless.  The song in effect commands Time to stand still.  And it complies.  Every time (that word again) we hear the song, or sing it, or hum it, we step outside of time and enter into that time-less space, that island, that refuge, that no-time, where exist only the song, the words, and that haunting voice.