Patterns

The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves,
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees,
And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall,
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl.

Up a narrow flight of stairs
In a narrow little room,
As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom.
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me.

From the moment of my birth
To the instant of my death,
There are patterns I must follow
Just as I must breathe each breath.
Like a rat in a maze
The path before me lies,
And the pattern never alters
Until the rat dies.

And the pattern still remains
On the wall where darkness fell,
And it's fitting that it should,
For in darkness I must dwell.
Like the color of my skin,
Or the day that I grow old,
My life is made of patterns
That can scarcely be controlled.

 

Comentarios: Retrato lúgubre pero honesto del condicionamiento humano, una canción de un joven Paul Simon que ya se preguntaba —con claridad y lirismo— si realmente somos libres o simplemente seguimos diseños invisibles que nos dictan qué hacer, cómo pensar, qué sentir.

"Patterns" se alinea con las preocupaciones existenciales de los años 60: alienación, estructura social, psicología del yo. Hay resonancias con el existencialismo (Sartre, Camus), y con los movimientos contraculturales que empezaban a cuestionar la rigidez del sistema social y personal.