Their sails are lost. This was their epitaph along with the recorded black sky and the ashfall. Then Egypt forgot the gracious isle of the olives and the palaces of the seven kings where athletes somersaulted over the spread horns of bulls. They died in one night, the pillars of the palace buckling, great stones cast down, the galleys beached on the shore, ruin and ashes assailing men from the sky. Thera, the burst throat of the world, coughing fire and brimstone there to the north, its voice like the bellowing of a loosed god long propitiated to no purpose.
Civilizations die as men die, by accident then.
I have seen on an old maple stump a sapling attempt to grow. The Kefti come no more, but here the excavated amphorae stand by the palace walls waiting and the beautiful art is known in the books of the world. Something lingers in the air as though it would speak. The waters are bright blue. I, whose people were horned barbarians, admire what was done here.