Stephen Sondheim
Finishing the Hat
[GEORGE]
Mademoiselles...
You and 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 woman 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