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.
By David Selzer