Jokerman plays all the holy tricksters who eternally help us to face the end of our time. Dylan casts at once this song as bread on the waters, the first track then as now. Dylan's equivalent to J'Accuse, the novelist Zola telling the truth about those who had lied about Captain Dreyfus. Carter was not finally, fully, free until 1988. That last thing, as everybody knows, they can never do.
Time is for keeps.
So slippery, love. The rhymes are lovely here, and apt to that tricky business love. And rhyme is a kind of loving, two things becoming one yet not losing their own identity. The Dalai Lama. Driving into love, and reversing out of it.