Al Stewart - Time Passages

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow

All round the day was going down slow

Night like a river beginning to flow

I felt the beat of my mind go

Drifting into time passages

Years go falling in the fading light

Time passages

Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Well I'm not the kind to live in the past

The years run too short and the days too fast

The things you lean on are the things that don't last

Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these

Time passages

There's something back here that you left behind

Oh time passages

Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn

I don't know why you should feel

That there's something to learn

It's just a game that you play

Well the picture is changing

Now you're part of a crowd

They're laughing at something

And the music's loud

A girl comes towards you

You once used to know

You reach out your hand

But you're all alone, in these

Time passages

I know you're in there, you're just out of sight

Time passages

Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

Al Stewart - Year of the cat

On a morning from a Bogart movie

In a country where they turn back time

You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre

Contemplating a crime

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running

Like a watercolour in the rain

Don't bother asking for explanations

She'll just tell you that she came

In the year of the cat

She doesn't give you time for questions

As she locks up your arm in hers

And you follow 'till your sense of which direction

Completely disappears

By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls

There's a hidden door she leads you to

These days, she says, I feel my life

Just like a river running through

The year of the cat

Well, she looks at you so cooly

And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea

She comes in incense and patchouli

So you take her, to find what's waiting inside

The year of the cat

Well, morning comes and you're still with her

And the bus and the tourists are gone

And you've thrown away your choice and lost your ticket

So you have to stay on

But the drum-beat strains of the night remain

In the rhythm of the new-born day

You know sometimes you're bound to leave her

But for now you're going to stay

In the year of the cat