Buddhas of Bamian by Arthur Callender

The cliff-carved buddhas
of Bamian were sixty
metres tall, or thereabouts.

Fellow travellers were
photographed standing on
the statues’ heads,

the features of which had been
disfigured over centuries by
weather and adherents to a
different faith.

Thirty years on, the Taliban
reduced them to rubble in celebration
of the one true Prophet’s grace.

I trust Siddhartha viewed it
with a smile upon his face.


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