Tallahatchie Bridge

A year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billie Joe
And Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time picking flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

(Bobbie Gentry, Ode to Billie Joe, 1967)

Matchstick men and you

When I look up to the skies
I see your eyes
A funny kind of yellow

I rush home to bed I soak my head
I see your face
Underneath my pillow

I wake next morning, tired, still yawning
See your face come
Peeping through my window

Pictures of matchstick men and you
Mirages of matchstick men and you
All I ever see is them and you

(Status Quo, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, 1968)

I've given you my onliness

If I were a carpenter

And you were a lady

Would you marry me anyway

Would you have my baby

If a tinker were my trade

Would you still find me

Carrying the pots I made

Following behind me

Save my love through loneliness

Save my love for sorrow

I've given you my onliness

Come give me your tomorrow

(Tim Hardin, If I Were A Carpenter, 1967)

What might have been

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

(Thomas S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, 1936)

If you know what I mean

There she is again stepping out of her limousine,
Looking like the cover of a twenty dollar magazine.
She's got it where you find it,
If you know what I mean.

She's a…
Natural born woman,
Natural born woman,
Natural born woman.

There she is again, watch her stop the Main Street in its tracks,
Looking like a Creole Queen hair hanging down her back.
I said don't look too long, boy,
She'll make your glasses crack.

(Steve Marriott, Natural Born Bugie, 1968)

The Open Door

«Probably it had been a servants' entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called "the offices" in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered, —pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the door-way open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing, —closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance which nothing justified.»
(Margaret Oliphant, The Open Door, 1881)

Le chat et le temps

Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around
Look at yourself, look at yourself…

(Strawberry Alarm Clock, Incense and Peppermints, 1967)