The Quiet Ones

Don’t expect them to talk about it here.

They keep their mouths shut when folks come around.

They never violate their silence, year

after year drowning their secrets in the sound.

They keep things under hats so broad and tight

you can’t see the scalp sweating at the roots.

They lean as though to whisper, but don’t quite,

grinding all gossip underneath their boots.

Done with the day’s noise and delirium,

though the last light is flaring like a struck

match, dousing their pupils with a sallow fire,

they dream, but do not speak, of the night to come,

who know repression is a rueful luck

and rhetoric the ruin of desire.