AWAKE AND WATCHING

One of the painter's favorite themes

a post-coital variation of the tableaux

of the artist  and the model ,done by moonlight

 the properties of the studio

dishevelled  by goatish sex.

Light emanates from the figure
  of the Beloved, asleep and quite at peace.
She does not stir except to fall
  further into a deep circle of calm
  which sheds a light in the room,
  who murmurs a name from afar
in some bright field
  she moves in in her dream.

The strangest land of snow
   however has captured him
who stays awake inside the thought
  that time is not continuous
  but a vast palace with trapdoors
  and secret apartments
in which he comes and goes,
  and loses her again
forewarned by happiness
  and this same scene
revisited time after time from then

His own phantom there
  keeps vigil; he is vaguely aware
  of entering through a door
  from the future:
this would account for
the strength of the  cliche
  of the sleeper shedding light
 and the dark watcher.

( illustration from Picasso's Vollard Suite/1936)
   .