A dear friend, Kaloust Babian, who is also a professional photographer, took these photographs of me some thirty years ago, and they have sat in a box for almost as many years because I couldn’t figure out what to do with them—until now, that is, when it occurred to me that they are made for PhotoStory. I wrote the poem almost the same number of years ago, composed it in my head while stuck in traffic in Manhattan one sweltering August afternoon. The title is taken from a quatrain of Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau Ivre”: Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer : L'âcre amour m'a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes. Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j'aille à la mer ! The poem: Mais,Vrai, J'ai Trop Pleuré Neither bile nor joy shall linger in my throat For long.  Each, thick in the gullet, a threat To rock beyond gunwale the drunken boat, Launches heart toward its penultimate beat. A pale green dream once sweet upon the tongue, Fresh as first spring; deep green held at bay; tang of salt; a full sail sucking at the bung Of summer the southwind fathers with a bang! Winds die, sails flap, suns set--the bitter end. No loop, nor knot, nor any tie to bind You to me. Dear and most unlikely friend, Things come undone, defy a better bond. Old men, sunned overmuch, should seek the cool Of the shadeward side and an even keel. The music is Frank Chacksfield's "Ebb Tide"