For Balkh

For Balkh بلخ

Dust pounded to finer dust, our homes and families gone,

Our history re-written, who knows us now?

Even our city has been renamed so often its lineage is lost.

A town in a war-torn country, itself known only for its terrorists

Its hated Taliban and its opium farms

In the ruins you may find the clues, these fragments may yet say,

Once we were proud Bactrians, a merchant capital on the Silk Road,

Home of lapis lazuli, our palaces full of Chinese lacquers, Indian ivories,

Greek and Egyptian statuary. Here, Alexander took Roxanne,

Our daughter, as his wife, and Bactra as his Eastern capital.

On the wind you may yet hear our songs,

Cradle of magi, poets and sages, birthplace of Zoroaster,

Of Jelaleddin Rumi, poet of the whirling dervishes.

Young women still murmur to Rabia Balkhi, killed by her family

For loving a slave, a final poem left in her own blood.

Travellers spoke of our wonders once. Dear old Xuanzang,

Who carried Buddhism home to China on his back,

Noted the hundred temples on his visit, the radiant holy relics,

But criticised the laxity of our thousand monks.

Marco Polo called us a splendid city, (though now much reduced in size).

Even so, the city sacked by Genghis Khan was an Islamic cosmopolis,

Still rich in Buddhist shrines and Zoroastran fire temples.

He razed our homes and put our families to the sword (again).

The city survived, a Moghul, then an Uzbek town,

But the glory faded and the old town was a maze of azure-painted ruins.

So even now, you hear of us and do not know whereof you speak.

Our Bactrian camels crossed the world (and that includes the wet bits).

The Ghan railway in Australia was named for us

To honour the sweat of Afghan camel herders who made it possible,

Opening up some never imagined extension of the Silk Road, East.

Yet still your bombs crash down upon the ruins of our history.

Where once we were known as the mother of all cities.

We dare not walk these paths, for Russian and Western mines still lie

Among 3000 years of grace, all broken now,

Fragments pounded from dust to finer dust, our heritage erased.

by Lynne M. Collis ©2007 All Rights Reserved

Permission to quote was requested from Colin Thubron and his publishers, stating that he would be credited as follows: "with thanks to Colin Thubron for inspiration and quotes from "Shadow of the Silk Road" Chatto & Windus 2006". No response was received.