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Heraklion

POETRY

A GOOSE IN THE BAMBOO

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read1.9K views

Catching a charter flight from Manchester,

the family eases through security

but I am detained – there are traces

of explosive in my backpack: poems

on the hard drive? The scanner is at fault.

 

At Nikos Kazantzakis Heraklion –

the only airport named for a writer –

one of our cases arrives broken

on the single baggage carousel

and one of the gent’s toilets has backed up

but ‘Zorba’s Dance’ is playing somewhere,

the sea beyond the runways could be almost

‘wine-dark’ and the oven heat warms old bones.

 

Our hotel room overlooks a valley

charmed by Cretan sun in early June, washed

in El Greco shades and citrus colours,

with the usual eclectic small holdings

among the scrub – olives, vines, tomatoes

and bananas; hens and cock scratching;

three nanny goats clanking; two black dogs caged;

a stand of bamboo. On our balcony

with our granddaughter we play ‘I spy’

– but we cannot see the goose that honks

periodically in the bamboo

and sets the watch dogs barking.

 

There are activities throughout the day

round the pool for children of all ages.

It is water polo time and chaps

from England, Poland, Germany play

boisterously but amicably.

The French study their screens, a quartet

of middle aged Israeli men is aloof,

two British Asian families remain

circumspect. We came last time in early May –

the Great Patriotic Holiday

enjoyed by affluent ethnic Russians.

Our granddaughter swims endlessly like a shrimp

in the cosmopolitan waters.

 

At Heraklion the security

is seasonal, part-timers attired

in G4S finery complete

with white lanyards so there is role play –

queues are long and scrutiny relaxed.

At Manchester, in the EU passport queue

we shuffle along, without music,

with passengers from Islamabad

to the ID scanner – and chuckle,

thinking of all the closet racists

who would swallow their tongues in such a queue.

At the scanner, a witty, local lass

in a hijab helps us. O brave new world

that has such! ARRIVALS is threatening

with armed police, loud with distant honking.

A car has been parked in the wrong place.

We have flown from attic comedy to low

farce, goosed in the process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CONCRETE MYTHS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

We have explained about Knossos in the car,
so she is keen to see the palace.
(We have not mentioned the Minotaur
or Daedalus and Icarus). She likes
the cats, the peacock and the cicadas
and appears not disappointed at all
by Arthur Evans’ concrete. Maybe
she knows the concerns of grown-ups are
more illusionary than substantial –
and a young woman, posing like Betty Boop
in high heels and sharp yellow dress
by an amphora, would prove her point.

Knossos is on the edge of Heraklion’s
southern suburbs. Just down the road from here
is a pristine Ottoman aqueduct
built across a narrow, river valley.
Swallows and swifts nest in the post holes.
The dingle is filled with bougainvillea,
jacaranda and pink oleander.
We walk up to a church, open and full
of silver – St Irini’s – and a playground.
She runs to the swings. There is no mention
in any of the guidebooks of the aqueduct
or the saint – never mind the nesting birds
or the valley abounding with flowers
or the safe place to play. Under
an ancient, encompassing olive tree
with labyrinthine branches, she flies high.

 

 

 

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POETRY

THE FALL OF EMPIRES

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.7K views

On the manicured corniche between Elounda

and Plaka – before the balconied hotels

that rise up the mountainside tier by

expensive tier – is the Turkish Governor’s house,

abandoned for nearly a century.

We venture up the steep, pitted drive

but sudden howling from unseen dogs

deters. On the opposite side of the bay,

where only widows on donkeys go,

the shore is festooned with plastic bags

shredded by the tides and bleached by the sun.

The foundations of the antique city

of Olous shimmer beneath the water.

 

The French dug a canal, near the salt pans

the Venetians laid out, between the bay

and Mirabello Gulf. The Canal Bar,

ruined now – the owner’s wife died, his daughters

left to work in gift shops in Heraklion –

was popular with tourists, mostly Brits.

Elounda is populous with ex-pats.

Imperial Airways’ Short Brothers’

flying boats, en route from Southampton

to erstwhile Bombay, would refuel nearby

and passengers overnight at an hotel

in the town – among them Churchill, Ghandi.

 

From our table at Plaka’s Giorgos

Taverna, we are fanned by zephyrus airs

and see the deep blue of the bay and the isle

of Spinalonga – first a Venetian

then Ottoman fortress, then lazaret

(in effect, a leper prison) and now

a heritage site. Inmates sometimes

would swim for freedom across the bay.

The Werhmacht was stationed here. For sport,

soldiers would shoot, night or day, at fugitives.

 

We are eating grilled kefalos – mullet –

with aubergine au gratin and frites,

and drinking bottles of Mythos beer.

The couple at the next table are French. They are

treating their Spinalonga guide to lunch.

He speaks English. They do not. They ask us

if we speak French. We reply haltingly.

The young waiter, who is Albanian,

steps forward, deferentially. He informs us,

modestly, in the relevant languages –

that he speaks some English, French and Greek.

Emboldened by our immediate respect,

he tells us he is a first class graduate

of the modern language faculty

of the University of Tirana.

‘Balkans is no good now!’ he exclaims.

So exiles become polyglots. A youngish

Israeli family – father, mother,

twin girls – arrive. We hear the children’s

bubbling Hebrew while they all study

the menu outside. As they enter,

the waiter greets them in English. They respond.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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