Francoise

For Pablo

Issue #18

Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot in Antibes, 1946 (Photo: Michel Sima)

Francoise

Some ask,
"How could you have
stayed with such a beast?"
Others remark, with awe,
"How could you have
left such a genius?"
And neither understands
the true nature of our relationship
and the life we shared.
At first, it was a game,
a challenge, nothing that
I took too seriously. I enjoyed
the give and take, the sparring
like a matador and the bull.
Each sees the world
through his eyes, his demons.

He kissed me once,
sudden, unexpected, hard,
his lips biting into mine,
the pressure of his member,
aroused, passionate, like his
paint brushes, bristling yet supple.
Then he pretended to be shocked
when I did not slap him,
when I did not yell for help.
Instead, I offered myself,
a sacrifice on the altar,
a muffin to be consumed.
And he ran like
a child with his hand
in the cookie jar,
afraid of being too close,
afraid of losing himself in my fire.

What you and all the others,
don't understand is that
he was spring
to my winter,
he was chaos
to my structure.
My father raised me to
be a boy, to follow in
his footsteps, to love
the practical, the mundane.
I rebelled. Pablo offered
what my father could not give—
freedom, the joy of childhood,
anarchy and the fun of living.
I bathed in the craziness,
the spontaneity, the wild
reckless rush towards insanity.

Another time, he seduced
me into lying naked
beside him and then
refused to touch me.
Claimed that all he wanted
was to discover if my body
was as beautiful as
the one in his imagination.
And when I asked whether it was,
he only laughed, that deep
rumbling, belly-shattering laugh
that made me mad.
I yelled at him and
kicked him. I aimed for his groin,
but missed when he stepped aside,
my foot glancing off his thigh.

I think that one of the things
that made our relationship
last as long as it did
was my independence and defiance.
I kept surprising him.
He never knew what to expect.
I kept him on his toes;
I was not the submissive little wife—
who waited patiently for
her drunken bum of a husband
to return home and beat her.
I stood up to him from day one.

My father, though, until he died
believed that Pablo had ruined me—
that he had seduced an innocent
child, brainwashed me.
But I was more my father's child
than my father knew.
I applied what he taught me
to a different arena,
a different form of warfare.
I controlled Pablo as much
if not more than he did me.
From the very beginning,
I knew what the game was,
what the risks were, and I
believed that I was strong enough
to win. My father had taught
me understand the subtleties
of the game, and how sometimes 
you win by appearing to lose.

What I did not understand
in the beginning—what has
taken me years to realize
was that Pablo was my father
in a different disguise. What I took
for spontaneity and anarchy
was only the rigidness
of my father turned inside out.
They were opposite sides
of the same coin—cut from
the same cloth. Men who
in the end behaved like tyrants
and if I did not obey, they threw me out.
Sure, they enjoyed my independence,
and that I was not meek and mild,
but only so far—as long as I did
not reject them—as long as 
I eventually gave in, conceded
to their wishes, they would
tolerate my free spirit—
my thinking for myself. They would 
brag about my intelligence to others.
But I had to let them win the final battle—
to believe that they had conquered.

I had escaped one prison,
one set of bars, only to find
myself firmly entrenched 
behind the walls of another.
So again, I had to break free,
to find my own way,
to seek my own path.
Yes, I survived living
with the great Picasso,
and am a stronger woman
for having faced the darkness
of my fears, for having
wrestled with the angel
of creativity, for having been
consumed by the fires of passion.
What does not destroy us
can only make us stronger.
So when they ask,
"How could you leave
such a genius,"
I only smile and say,
"It was an honor
to have known him."

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Notes

Many years ago, I read Life With Picasso, a memoir by Françoise Gilot. Several weeks later, I wrote this poem in response to the book.

Francoise Gilot tells the story of living with Pablo Picasso when he was in his 60s and she was in her 20s. She gave birth to 2 of his four children. Francoise shares stories in the book about Picasso's love life, his friends, and his views on art.

Thanks for reading.

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