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THE SKELETON COAST
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Across the Uhab
river’s dry bed
Lies a land unlike
any other,
An arid plain beside
the sea,
Of wild, mysterious
beauty.
Land of majesty,
wonder and awe
In pastels, seven
colours of sand
That stir a man from
within
To be his most and to
strive ever for more.
And fog rolls in on
chill, chill winds
From a cold, cold
treacherous sea.
Beheld there
incongruous things
Like ship, now
skeletal wrecks,
Adrift on an ocean of
sand
Mile upon mile from
the shore.
White-bleached
driftwood there
Castaways from far
distant land.
And in the vastness
of that wide space
Is thrust upon man
his own tininess.
And there's a stillness and a silence
To calm a turbulent
soul
And arranges things
from within
That a tendency to
violence,
Gives way to love of
peace!
But stranger by far
than all things,
In that strangest of
wild, wild lands,
Is the companionship
that is given
By desert solitude,
to those that seek –
And the
thus-comforted soul
Sings its songs in
return
In that wilderness
strange and unique.
Terry Dawson
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