Who knows where the time goes?

Sandy Denny's remarkable song, said to be only the second one she ever wrote. 

Like Lee Harwood's "Question of Geography", a defining 1960s document, portrait of a new society. 

Time in the song comes before us in two aspects. First the passing of time, endless, flowing, mysterious: something we don't need to count or fear or try to dance to the tune of. The landscape of the song is austere and wintry, but there's a luxuriance in that copious time. Second is the instinct of knowing that "it's time", as manifested by the birds leaving the shore, and as also manifested, in the crucial third verse, by Sandy and her lover knowing when it's time for their love to end. 

The song rejects the promptings of society ("you'd better get a job, pull yourself together"), of parents ("when are you getting married"), friends ("you're so good together", or "s/he's bad for you"), the church, politicians, the media, everyone. It even rejects nature, or rather the surface nature of weather and seasonal changes, in favour of a conviction that springs from a deeper nature: When the time comes, I'll know...

Opinions differ on whether it's one of the most joyous songs ever written, or one of the most desperately sad. Probably both. Its portrait of a new way of living, a way of youth, is eternally inspiring but also, if you think how it all went wrong then, a lament and a judgment. (Sandy's alcohol-related death in 1978 colours how we hear it, too.)

No-one could sing it better than she did, and there'll never be a better version than the one on Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking (1969), with Richard Thompson's guitar weaving through the song's unhurried spaciousness.  

Nevertheless, it's a song lots of us want to try for ourselves.  Here's my sketchy first attempt, still reading the lyrics off my phone and before I even had the melody quite right, but I thought it came out OK.

[I'm using Whyp to host this, because I've run out of space on Soundcloud... bit of an experiment....]