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Body parts in Purbeck

Ruth Ayle

Your Purbeck not-real-marble

is a skim of make-up on a face,
turned to tourists and the re red.

Your body layers down

through quarrymen’s names,
shepherds of the limestone and its breeds.

The crumbly Rag-stone, paving-stone Grub;
Roach that holds fossilised footprints

from the mud of brackish Jurassic lagoons.

Then blue-hued Thornbeck, Whetsun,
and Freestone deeper s ll,

Purbeck to Portland, stone of the state.

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