The Stones of Bamiyan
"Their golden color sparkles on every side,"
said a traveler of the two vast standing Buddhas.
For fifteen centuries they had stood here--
towering above the valley, with their battered faces,
broken-off arms and all, undisturbed
in their cusped sandstone niches
hewn out of the sheer cliffs of the Hindu Kush,
spangled with a honeycomb of monasteries
and chanting stupas--as a stairway to heaven.
"We don't understand why ...