A Leak In The Safe

Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)
after Nadar Gaspard Félix Tournachon (French, 1820 – 1910)

Charles Baudelaire, Full Face III, 1868

Sed Non Satiata

Strange deity, brown as nights,
Whose perfume is mixed with musk and Havanah,
Magical creation, Faust of the savanna,
Sorceress with the ebony thighs, child of black midnights,

I prefer to African wines, to opium, to burgundy,
The elixir of your mouth where love parades itself;
When my desires leave in caravan for you,
Your eyes are the reservoir where my cares drink.

From those two great black eyes, chimneys of our spirit,
O pitiless demon, throw out less flame at me;
I am no Styx to clasp you nine times,

Nor can I, alas, dissolute shrew,
To break your courage, bring you to bay,
Become any Proserpine in the hell of your bed!

— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883)

poetry by Charles Baudelaire (French, 1821-1867)

Portrait of Lola de Valence, 1862-63

Art Institute of Chicago

On Manet’s Picture “Lola of Valencia”

Amongst the myriad flowers on beauty’s stem
It’s hard to choose. Such crowds there are of them
But Lola burns with unexpected fuel
The radiance of a black and rosy jewel.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)