‘I Have No Thought Of Time . . .’

 by whiteray

I see the signs: A little bit of mist in the morning air. The turning of the sumac along the roadsides. The first leaves just beginning to turn on the flowering crab next to our deck.

 Autumn is coming. My time of year. 

The Texas Gal and I have talked about the seasons many times over these past twenty years. She likes the spring, when everything is green and new and possible. It’s a sweet time. 

And when we have those conversations, I always claim autumn. To me autumn is a bittersweet season, and for as long as I can remember, bittersweet has been my default. It’s colored what I read and what I write, what I sing and what I hear, and – for many of the years of my life – what I felt and how I lived. 

I no longer feel or live that way, thanks to the Texas Gal’s presence in my life. But I still feel the pull of the bittersweet in literature, movies, television and song, sensing that tales of joyous but ultimately failed pairings and of barely missed chances that rarely resolve well are somehow more interesting and more valid to me than easy happy endings. 

I am an autumnal man, and so is much of the music I love. They are tunes of reverie, tunes of pondering the flow of days, of seasons, of years, of lives. 

My thought is to feature the best of those songs for the next several weeks. A good place to start is “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? 

Written by British folkie Sandy Denny, the song was first recorded in 1967 by the Strawbs with Denny sitting in. That version wasn’t released for six years, however, leaving the first release of the song to come from American Judy Collins in 1968. 

There’s nothing at all wrong with Collins’ version, but by 1969, Sandy Denny had joined the British folk-rock group Fairport Convention, and on the album Unhalfbricking, she took the lead vocal on her own song. And having listened to many versions of the song over the years, I think Fairport Convention provided the definitive version: