"And the leaves that are green..."

Simon and Garfunkle

Sounds of Silence

(Image from Simon and Garfunkle Lyrics Archive)

In 1967, I was ten years old, and my twenty-seven-year-old mother bought the Simon and Garfunkle album Sounds of Silence, which had just come out the previous year, and my four brothers and I played it over and over and over until we'd learned the lyrics to all eleven songs, so I had time to puzzle over the opening lines to Paul Simon's twenty-four-line song "Leaves That Are Green":

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song
I'm twenty-two now but I won't be for long . . .

Turning those lines over in my ten-year-old mind until the words were almost tangible, as with a Zen koan, I wondered, "If he wrote the song at twenty-one, how can he 'remember' it as if he were twenty-two?"

I still puzzle over this.

Paul Simon was born in 1941. Did he write that song in 1962 or 1963? It was first released in 1965, when it appeared on a single's disk backing "I Am a Rock." Did he write it three years before then . . . or two?

Maybe I should just email Paul Simon and inquire personally . . . as I did with Philip Bobbitt. Anybody know Paul Simon's email address?

Meanwhile, go and listen...