“last is one of those words with a broad sense scope.  We are upset when we come in last but happy when something we enjoy lasts.  Conversely, it’s been said that the first shall be last and the last shall be first–“what’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top, you’re on the bottom,” sort of thing.  Likewise, we rather not endure things that last too long or that we don’t like.  After much delay, we may exclaim with exuberance, “At long last,” or demand, “This is the last straw.”  “last” has a lasting presence in daily expression.

Dylan’s rhymes “last” with “past” in “Beyond Here Lies Nothin.”

Down every street there’s a window
And every window made of glass
We’ll keep on lovin’ pretty baby
For as long as love will last
Beyond here lies nothin’
But the mountains of the past

Yes, the past lasts, like those mountains.  American authors like Cormac McCarthy, Willa Cather, and William Faulkner come to mind as ones who would agree.  Faulkner went as far as to say, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”

To me, the lasting effect of past inspired by rhyme is the perfect way to explore Dylan’s use of the word.

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The line echos Faulker’s quote that begins this blog page.  The second line completes the rhyming with the word “last” sung by Dylan with a strong effort by Dylan to make it last:

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You were my first love and you will be my laaaaaaaaaaast

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Eric Lott calls the song one of those “soft shoe shuffles.”  In such songs, some sounds are made to last. Listen to Billie Holiday make “tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime” last on Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger’s “Havin Myself a Time,” the tune David Yaffe thinks Dylan heard and “based some changes on”:

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“Take what you gathered from coincidence,” says Dylan in “It’s All Over Baby Blue.”  It is coincidence that on the day before the Mayans proclaim the end of the world as we know it, I would target these rhyming lines from “Political World”:

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We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last

There’s that “past”/”last” rhyme again.  Maybe it’s the perfect rhyme.  Maybe it’s the duality these words create together. Maybe it says what he wants to say whether those words rhymed or not.  In the world of this rhyme courage is gone–a thing of the past–without it we think things like tomorrow is our last.  What would a non-political world be like?  A place where there’s courage and where you don’t think or aren’t compelled to think that next days could be last ones.  This is what Dylan does best.  When he defines something at the same time he’s defining something else, which redefines what he set out defining.  “Don’t even remember what her lips felt like on mine.  Most of the time.”  Most of the time defined, rest of time defined, too.  Most of time redefined.

Dante has something to say about those who predict the future.  They’re better than thieves and hypocrites, but worse than panderers and seducers.  Their punishment? “[T]o have their heads turned backwards on theirs bodies and to be compelled to walk backwards (into the past?) through all eternity, their eyes blinded with tears” ( so they can’t see forward anymore?) (Ciardi).  Perhaps they above all should hope that tomorrow is not the last day.

One day they blew him down in a clam bar in New York
He could see it comin’ through the door as he lifted up his fork
He pushed the table over to protect his family
Then he staggered out into the streets of Little Italy

This deadly blowing down or blast took place specifically at Umberto’s Clam House at 129 Mulberry Street in Little Italy.  More specifically, the table in the foreground is where Joey Gallo ate his last supper.

With your pockets well protected at last
And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass
And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass

Christopher Ricks in his chapter on “Sad-Eyed” adds the word “resistance” to pockets when referring to the items the song “insists upon listing”:  “her pockets of resistance.” The dimension Ricks adds with that word moves the “pocket” line away from a longing to be financially secure (“at last“) to one much less mundane–one that depicts this Sad-Eyed lady as someone who has always wanted to have her ability to resist protected, perhaps someone who has reached a place in her mind or emotionally where she can hold her desires in check.  More than anything what this narrator is able to reveal about her  speaks of how well he knows her.  To know so certainly how deeply someone feels is to reach a place, too, “at last,” that says something about what lovers, like no other companions, can express to each other.  I thank Ricks for that one word added, making the line so much more rich with meaning.