The Quiet Folk Poem by C Richard Miles

Just let me wander now among the quiet folk
There, in the grassy graveyard, up the winding hill
Above the sleeping village, where they do not speak.
But, in their day, these quiet folk were never still
Or silent, as they lie now, bustling in the rush
To beat the clock that stood there in the busy mill
Ready to punch their card and dock their pittance hard
For each paltry minute late. But now, they will
Not ever be so late again, these quiet folk;
For them the sifting hourglass sand has had its fill
And regulating clocks have stopped; the tide of time,
Which roughly washed upon their lives’ stark shores, is still
And so they sleep, unburdened with the constant drip
Of ticking that infects each being with its ill
And drives us on incessant, as it meanly steals
Each precious second squirreled like the coins which fill
Our paltry purse to spend on leisure. Loud it shouts,
Impelling like a sergeant-major taking drill
To where we do not wish to go. Just give me strength
To flee this soul-destroying drudgery’s foul chill.
So let me wander there among the quiet folk,
Escape life’s ebb and flow. Let me be, like them, still
Like looms which languish in the long-closed, silent mill
Down in the village, there beneath the winding hill.
To take my leave of life a while and thus refill
So I can walk refreshed, and so be what I will.