Abstracted in Afghanistan

I pick cankers for a simple

Choose  a rhapsody in blue

Love lapis lazuli

and you.

I paint the Virgin Mary

With ultramarine pigment

Extracted from lapis lazuli

Only found in north-east Afghanistan

Where I am with the brave Kalash,

In their snow-capped mountains,

Of the Hindu Kush,

They have resisted assimilation into Islam for over a thousand years.

Their culture is unique and threatened with extinction.

The blue-blue skies

And their blue-green eyes

Hid in their high mountain valleys

Before the slaugher of 1893

When Abdur Rahman Khan

Forced the conversion  or death of the remaining kafirs.

Renamed their land Nuristan 'land of the enightened ones.'

There had been many pagans

Now only the brave Kalash remain

Pakistani men travel here to see unveiled women

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have announced

A jihad to rid the world of these few, brave non-believers

The Kalash, descendants of Alexander,

Dance around night-time fires; drink wine 

Practice ancient Olympic Sports

Wrestling and shot-put like the Greeks

With their piercing blue-green eyes, strong features and olive skins,

Even Alexander the Great was convinced of their Hellenic connection

Which is now to be torn to shreds by ignorant and bigoted devils..