Despite the storm flags that you flew
each time I changed the way you stood,
I've changed your portrait once again.
Some things, of course, are still the same:
the light remains intensely bright,
but Degas thinks it too precise:
More heart, less art, my dear Manet,
The scene, however, is quite new:
I've placed the viewer far at sea,
against the harbor's milky blue,
and then those colors, piece by piece,