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Purbeck Mist

Séamus Keates

In no single direc on do the leaden clouds relent.
Horizon, then an endless haze that looms below the sky.

Masking greens of lively charm surrounding this cold bubble,
hearty warmth from storied lands eludes the passers-by.

Souled sanctuarium for local and foreign folk,
lost to all the history and mist in which it’s drowned.

Sharing spaces once frequented by the monstrous beasts,
for whom the Purbeck Isle was once the natural stomping ground.

The only moving shadows of life, exclusively unhuman,
four-legged figures fill funereal farmlands of fog.

Ghostly forms of toiling quarrymen through the genera ons,
working toughly to the bone in dusty, thickened smog.

For those whose eyes are open to a world, divinely kissed,

beauty in the land not lost to blinding Purbeck mist.

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