We followed the signs from the car park.

Set on a promontory high above

the Bay of Episkopi, more or less intact,

was a Roman stadium, of classical

Olympic dimensions – eight runners,

two chariots’ wide. The early spring

late afternoon sun lit beige sandstone blocks

too big for the natives to have purloined.

As we were leaving a flock of goats chimed

in the scrub beside the stadium’s back wall.

That part of Cyprus officially

is British Overseas Territory,

as sovereign as, say, Salisbury Plain.

We passed an armed camp with high fences

and barrack huts and then, distantly

and also fenced, family quarters –

an estate of white semis with pitched roofs.

Only days after we had returned home

Tornados from RAF Akrotiri

launched missiles at sites in Syria.

Much of Eurasia is littered with

imperial ruins.