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.
By David Selzer