Poem: The listing freighter in the harbor at Kato Zakris

By Jack Brummet

Down the hill from the ruins
Of the Minoan palace at Kato Zakris
A battered and rusting old freighter showed up

Six months ago,
With a Pakistani crew
And flying the Egyptian flag.

None of the locals knows
Quite what went wrong.
They do know the ship is still here,

Anchored 30 meters offshore,
Rusting and listing in the harbor,
Waiting for indeterminate repairs

After running into some nebulous “trouble.”
So they parked her, where she sits today,
To the locals’ chagrin,

Waiting for Euros, parts, or a new owner.
No one quite seems to know.
There may or may not be a crew on board

As she slowly rusts away
And begins listing even more.
Someone will either show up with cash and parts,

Or the crew will slowly drift away
And they will eventually tow it out
And scuttle it in the Aegean.

My waiter told me “It was interesting
The first day, after that it’s a scar
We hope goes away soon.”
            ---o0o---

Poem: The Freighter at Kato Zakris

Poem: The Freighter at Kato Zakris
By Jack Brummet

Down the hill
From the Minoan palace at Kato Zakris,
A battered and rusting freighter showed up

Six months ago,
With a Pakistani crew
Under an Egyptian flag.

Now she sits 30 meters offshore,
Dead in the water,
Waiting for Euros, parts, or a new owner.

The locals don’t know
If there is a crew on board.
The waiter said

“It was interesting
The first day, after that it’s a scar
We hope goes away soon.”
---o0o---

Sitia to Iraklion to Santorini

The amazing fresco of leaping over the sacred bull, from Knossos. The painting is about 4,000 years old. Click to enlarge.

This morning, we packed and left Sitia and a brief beach interlude (punctuated by one ruin tromping stop). After four days in Sitia, we drove back to Heraklion, along the mountains, with the rugged Crete coast alongside us.


We came to Heraklion for one night, mainly to catch a ferry from here to Santorini tomorrow morning. We will stay in Santorini one night, check out the calderon, and then head off to Naxos for three days.




The Phaistos disk from the Knossos Minoan Palace. No one has ever succeeded in translating it, although they did manage to translate the texts of Linear A and Linear B (or one of them...I forget. The disks were created in about 1,600 B.C.Click to enlarge.

Naturally, while in Heraklion, we found time to visit the great archaeological museum here, with all its great artifacts from the Minoan civilizations, and in particular Knossos.

Heraklion was even busier and crazier than I remembered it from 25 years ago. Aside from the museum, we went out for a very good dinner--with a great complimentary dessert of flan, a Cretan pastry, and a bottle of grappa.

More tomorrow from Santorini (aka Thira)...

jack, Heraklion Crete, July 10, 2008
---o0o---