Where It's Quiet

Silence is better than this broken stutter
of words and half-words in a tangled chain,
binding tongues to a restless sleeper's mutter
of splinters of happiness and shards of pain
blended into some incomprehensible refrain.
Can't you be still, can't you quit that noise?
On a white cloth, shattered cups and stains
make random mock of all deliberate choice.
Rearrange these fragments. If they find their voice,
they'll say things you forgot you didn't want
to hear. If they say nothing at all, rejoice.
Best to avoid the babbling oracle's haunt
where fractured glimpses of the truth run riot--
lies, all lies. Truth lives where it's quiet.