THE GREENING OF CRETE

The car’s headlights illuminate the verges

of the motorway through the foothills,

and show how high the rainfall has been.

Tall bushes of pink and white oleander

burgeon – beneath them, hyacinth, iris.

All around in darkness is the scrubland

humankind has made – with occasional

vineyards, orchards, and scant pasture for herds

of goats and sheep. It once was bourneless forest:

tamarisk, cypress, maple, oak, chestnut.

We arrive at the hotel long after midnight.

When we open our room’s patio door

we are surprised, this being two hundred feet

or so above sea level and the sea being

the Mediterranean, to hear waves

breaking rather loudly. We search for the light,

and, finding it, see the sounds are winds

roughly chafing a palm tree’s sword-shaped leaves

in the garden in front of the patio.

In the morning sunlight the breeze shakes the fronds

like drying clothes snapping on a line, or oars

erratically dipped then raised. The sun

catches the violet wings of a carpenter bee

gathering pollen from a red hibiscus bush

sturdy in the terracotta soil –

and, out of sight, a collared dove calls

flutingly ‘to-do-so, to-do so’,

and a church bell rings inexplicably.

From nowhere a flock of herring gulls flaps

across our view like raucous seafarers.

And there always over the wide bay – deep once

with sea turtles and octopus and swordfish,

the blue of its waters matching the sky’s –

is the grey massive of mountains thousands

of feet in height, scored with millennia

of run-off. They are pitted with caves –

refuges, holy places – cleft with gorges

so profound rain turns to vapour as it falls.

The compassing sun highlights each contour.

As daylight begins to fade swifts and swallows

loop and weave across the soft, prolific air.

During dinner a full moon rises

over the mountains, making the rippling bay

silver-gilt. Later, on the patio,

we hear thunder rumble out at sea.

Rain pitters and patters on the palm fronds.

Suddenly the storm breaks, becomes torrential.

All around us lightning cracks, forks, sheets.

Next day it rains unceasingly. Guests linger

on their phones – in the restaurant, in the bars –

wishing they were elsewhere, hurrying

up steps, along paths, through arcades swept

haphazardly with rain and wind to their rooms,

and the Wi-Fi and the flat screen TV.