This poem derived from the conflation of two paintings: Balthus' "Jeune fille a la fenetre 1955" and a painting of the same title executed in 1957. In both we see a different child model, the daughter of a housekeeper I think, in similar postures of leaning to look out a window of the Chassy farm, at a brightly landscaped world beyond. The focal point of each painting is the window's casement, the threshold: between indoors and out, childhood and maturity, darkness and light.

The perspective catches the girl from behind, as if we have just come into the room and caught her there, daydreaming. But she is gazing intently like someone trapped in a particular space not of her choosing, and it occurs to me that the canvas too can be a prison and we the viewers as much the wardens as the artist himself. These images fascinate me--the silent girls of Balthus, frozen in their adolescence, caught in poses of innocence while burdened with the erotics of his (and our?) voyeurism, a little like butterflies on pins.