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.