From the Life

Stallworthy, Jon (1935 - 0)

Original Text

Jon Stallworthy, Rounding the Horn: Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 1998): 231-34.

"All this takes place on a hilly island in the Mediterranean," Picasso said. "Like Crete. That's where the minotaurs live, along the coast. They're the rich Seigneurs of the island. They know they're monsters, and they live, like dandies and dilettantes everywhere, the kind of existence that reeks of decadence in houses filled with works of art by the most fashionable painters and sculptors .... A minotaur keeps his women lavishly but he reigns by terror and they're glad to see him killed." ... He turned to another print, a minotaur watching over a sleeping woman. "He's studying her, trying to read her thoughts," he said, "trying to decide whether she loves him because he's a monster." He looked up at me. "Women are odd enough for that, you know." He looked down at the etching again. "It's hard to say whether he wants to wake her or kill her," he said.

Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake: Life with Picasso

THE SLEEPING GYPSY

1I was the gypsy sleeping

2under a desert moon

3white-bellied as the mandolin

4beside me on the dune.

5The wind that stirred my rainbow dress

6was no wind but the breath

7of some beast with my father's eyes

8and the smell of death.

LIBERATION

9In the room above the studio

10he freed me from my dress

11and tossing it over a chair

12stood back and said "Yes.

13Incredible how accurately

14I had prefigured your form."

15Afterwards on the bed,

16his touch was warm

17but distant: sculptor's hands

18about their business find

19whether their handiwork

20is ready to be signed.

21Outside the studio,

22after dark one could see

23boys building barricades;

24inside the studio,

25after Liberation

26the Fruits of Victory --

27tinned peaches, hams, one day

28a G.I.'s rum ration

29and a crate of grenades

30inscribed "To Picasso

31from Hemingway."

32After Cézanne's Apples

33and with their sculpted weight,

34Picasso's Pineapples

35shadow a blue-rimmed plate.

36Objets Trouvés? Still Life?

37Each in its fissured skin

38impervious to the knife.

39To peel one, pull the pin.

MY LAST MISTRESS

40That's my last mistress on the easel. I

41call her "The Fallen Picador" -- and why?

42She lived ten years with the minotaur

43and deserved to leave with the honours of war,

44so when Vallauris last July declared

45me president of the corrida, I shared

46the honours with her. Seeing that the bull

47was my symbol, the horse her symbol,

48what end could be more fitting than that they

49should face each other in a ritual way --

50life imitating art, a masterpiece

51of living theatre?

52 When I took my place

53in the president's box and raised my hand,

54she was the first out, scattering sand

55and with the hooves of her passaging horse

56determining my picture's lines of force.

57She circled the arena, reined in, bowed

58to me as president, and read aloud

59the proclamation in my honour. Then

60rode from the ring, leaving the bulls and men

61to face their deaths. There were no horses killed

62that day, but ever since my dreams are filled

63with goring. The result you see. Had she

64remained, unchanged, the girl who posed for me

65in the light of Liberation, hers

66would be a face the world remembers,

67a daughter of the sun, instead of this

68nightmare metamorphosis

69of woman into horse: familiar head

70and satin flank, the bull's head garlanded

71with entrails.

72 But enough of her.

73Here's something that I fancy you'll prefer --

74a necklace. Let me help. Look how your skin

75irradiates my metal from within.

76It fits that hollow better than its mould,

77my bull's horned head Chataganier cast in gold.

Publication Notes

A Guest from the Future (1995).

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2010

Rhyme

abcb, or unrhyming, or couplets

Form

quatrains and irregular stanzas

Special Copyright