LOOK ON MY WORKS
If you stand in the Central Court of Knossos –
or in what is assumed to be the court –
and look north you can see, above the trees,
the top of the white geodesic radome
of a US air force tracking station
outside the hillside village of Gournes
less than ten miles from Iraklion.
The station was abandoned in ’94,
presumably as a contribution to
‘the end of history’. Much of it
has been looted and vandalised and left
to weeds but some parts house an aquarium,
a dinosaur park, an animal shelter.
Now Cyprus, Greece and Israel are allied –
in part to exploit off-shore gas reserves –
there is talk the base may be re-opened.
Sometimes in the millennia-old ruins
of the palace – the causes of whose
unrecorded abandonment has filled
volumes of conjecture – you may believe
you can hear a peacock calling, calling
in all its finery.
Hugh Powell
August 26, 2023A perfect peacock! Breathtaking in its calling to link those thousands of years of civil society.
Mary Clark
September 3, 2023I had to read about the complicated history of Knossos and its cycle of birth and destruction for centuries. The Romans thought they were the first to colonize the site, but it was already ancient. People established religious and governmental centers and then faded away. The colonization had to do with short-sighted opportunism, and so it’s not surprising the lasting legacy is a myth of vanquishing a dangerous and scary foe – and escaping. It’s a myth, but did it have a basis in reality? Maybe it’s the most believable story about the place.