Morri Creech, American poet, born 1970. His collection The Sleep of Reason was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and his collection Field Knowledge (2006) won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize from Waywiser Press. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
THE QUIET ONES
Morri Creech
Morri Creech
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.