Finishing the Hat - Judy Collins

Mademoiselles

You end me, pal…

Second bottle

Ah, she looks for me Bonnet flapping

Yapping…

Ruff!

Chicken

Pastry…

Yes, she looks for me-good.

Let her look for me to tell me why she left me-

As I always knew she would.

I had thought she understood.

They have never understood,

And no reason that they should.

But if anybody could…

Finishing the hat,

How you have to finish the hat.

How you watch the rest of the world

From a window

While you finish the hat.

Mapping out a sky.

What you feel like, planning a sky.

What you feel when voices that come

Through the window

Go Until they distance and die,

Until there’s nothing but sky

And how you’re always turning back too late

From the grass or the stick

Or the dog or the light,

How the kind of woman willing to wait’s

Not the kind that you want to find waiting

To return you to the night,

Dizzy from the height,

Coming from the hat,

Studying the hat,

Entering the world of the hat,

Reaching through the world of the hat

Like a window,

Back to this one from that.

Studying a face,

Stepping back to look at a face

Leaves a little space in the way like a window,

But to see

It’s the only way to see.

And when the woman that you wanted goes,

You can say to yourself, «Well, I give what I give.»

But the women who won’t wait for you knows

That, however you live,

There’s a part of you always standing by,

Mapping out the sky,

Finishing a hat

Starting on a hat

Finishing a hat

Look, I made a hat

Where there never was a hat