Sunday Pages: "Redux"

A poem about Bamiyan

Feb 02, 2025

Dear Reader,

As you read this, I am probably on my flight back from Berlin. It’s crazy: I left for Germany on Tuesday, and it only took that long for air travel to get less safe. (It may not be the case that everything Trump touches dies, but it is certainly true that everything Musk touches explodes.)

By some scheduling miracle, my friend Zarina Zabrisky, who I’d never met before IRL, was also in Berlin this past week (see more below), and I had the pleasure of having dinner with her on Friday night. After we caught up, we were discussing the bleak state of the world, and I flashed on when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001. That act of desecration disturbed me on a visceral level, the mindless destruction of ancient art and beauty by a ragtag team of ignorant and violent zealots, literally led by a blind man.

“Maybe, when they did that, they unleashed something,” I said.

So I decided to write about Bamiyan and its spiritual connection to the here and now, and I regret to inform you that it came out in the form of a poem. (Don’t worry, I won’t make a habit of it!)

I hesitate to publish this, because I’ve worked on it for such a short period of time. Also, it’s not what I’d call hopeful. But just as the triumphant poem I wrote before the election—when I assumed Kamala had won—was a time capsule of my emotional state at that precise moment in history, so does this one convey how I am feeling right now, which is a mix of fear, anxiety, sadness, and white-hot rage.

Redux

I hope you’re well, is how I’d start my notes,
Or well as can be, with the world on fire.
The actual’s subsumed the metaphor.
Our city is in flames, our airplanes crash,
And in the capital the Vandals smash
And rape and pillage and seek out revenge—
Constantinople back in 1204.

A legion of Cassandras was ignored.
An oligarchy gathered up the votes,
And with a foreign power did conspire
To set upon the throne a venal liege.
We thus are terrified (who are not bored)
Of violent overthrow of new by old.
In broken bits around us lie the walls—
Things fell apart; the center did not hold.
The shadow of the night upon us falls:
Recall when Alexandria caught fire,
At Nineveh the knowledge that was lost,
At Mycenae before the long dark age,
And what the ancients knew at Babylon.

I think of the stone ruins at Bamiyan.
Disciples of a jealous artless god
Annihilated the two Buddhas there—
Determined in their blindness to destroy
Those monuments to wisdom and to joy.
At Bamiyan, what djinni was unleashed?
What is the nature of this bestial liar
Who maddens us with his contagious rage?
Wherefore this soulless, pathogenic host—
So furious, so hateful, and so odd?

Technology won’t save us. We have breached
The inner sanctum, awakened the terror.
Benighted armies girded for attack,
At sightless Mullah’s ignorant command,
Will put our gleaming cities to the sack—
Resolved to break what they can’t understand.

Thanks for allowing me to share that.

May this moment of darkness pass as quickly as a thunderstorm, and may the skies again be safe and clear.

Much love,

Greg

ICYMI

In Berlin, as mentioned, I got to meet my friend Zarina Zabrisky for the first time in person. We did a short live broadcast where she told me about her recent experiences in Berlin, in Tbilisi, and in Odesa.