"BEBE "BERARD

Critics praise
your unique fashion
and passion
for scenic designs
in the Sauguet ballet
as in Cocteau's Orphee
you explore the chic
and even its poverty
in galleries of gay Paris
stripped to the essential
baring grey space mastery
even Poulenc
wrote a Stabat Mater
for your miracle's memory
on notes which scatter
in a flippant age engraved
to embarrass the past
with gossip and flattery,
that disintegrated lives
of artists do matter
and will last.