allows us to do something gives us a possibility, that is, it gives what enables us. "Possibility" so understood, as what enables, means something else and something more than mere opportunity.

The third lecture intends to bring us properly face to face with a possibility, that is, to enable us to undergo an experience with language. What is necessary here is not only that on our chosen way we stay within the neighborhood of poetry and thinking. We also must look about us in this neighborhood, to see whether and in what manner it shows us something that transforms our relation to language. But of the way which is to lead us to the source of this possibility, it was said that it leads us only to where we already are. The "only" here does not mean a limitation, but rather points to this way's pure simplicity. The way allows us to reach what concerns us, in that domain where we are already staying. Why then, one may ask, still find a way to it? Answer: because where we already are, we are in such a way that at the same time we are not there, because we ourselves have not yet properly reached what concerns our being, not even approached it. The way that lets us reach where we already are, differing from all other ways, calls for an escort that runs far ahead. That escort is implied in the key word which we named in passing at the end of the first lecture. We have not yet commented on this directive character of the guiding key word. Nor could we have done so. For the second lecture had first to direct us straight to the country where the way belongs that is accompanied by the onward-beckoning guide-word. That country makes itself known in the neighborhood of poetry and thinking. Neighborhood means: dwelling in nearness. Poetry and thinking are modes of saying. The nearness that brings poetry and thinking together into neighborhood we call Saying. Here, we assume, is the essential nature of language. "To say," related to the Old Norse "saga," means to show: to make appear, set free, that is, to offer and extend what we call World, lighting and concealing it. This lighting and hiding proffer of the world is the essential being of Saying. The guide-word on the way within the neighborhood