what the heavenly fuck are those tears for?

It's as if the sea could listen, could be listening 

now, though that's impossible; I know. Like 

certain faces, their way of blurring at once 

ceremonial, flat, civilian—then they clear, 

skies beneath which the leaves spiraled like what 

looked like forever, mapling even the steeper 

shafts in memory, parts the light all but missed, 

keeps missing ... Husbandry turns out to have been, 

if hard, then not the hardest thing: I can care; I've 

cared. If never quite rescue—nowhere near as 

blue as that—then at least reprieve, whispering 

What the heavenly fuck are those tears for? Lately 

that, too, seems impossible. I don't see any tears. 

What I see: a fox paw for a paperweight; the 19th 

century as random taxidermied sparrow-domed 

in glass, mid-flight ... Maybe not the wings, this time; 

not the underwings, either. Dare me to stay. I'll stay. 

[Carl Phillips {1959- } 'Enough, Tom Fool, Now Sleep' from Reconnaissance]