The Inner World
by
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Innocenti
Florence 1998
The Visitor
At Charles De Gaulle
the airport, a jumbo leaps
from the tarmac
like a performing whale
into a leaden sky.
My mind falls back
To the children of yesterday
and yesteryear in Florence.
Captive boxes upon boxes,
books upon books,
meticulous accounts preserving
the names of the abandoned, unwanted,
now bound in leather and parchment.
Innocent but loved.
The curator turns the well worn
tome with the cold fingers
of a professional. Drones out the facts:
“The first was Aghata Smeralda
in 1492.” I think of the New World
and the Great Moghuls as his words rattle
through the mind and the musty archives.
I nod with measured gravity.
But soon the children are strangers
no more. As he shows the hidden amulets,
halved coins hidden in the swaddling
in case the mother, or father, returned
to reclaim their treasures.
Outside, the Tuscan sun
pours its gold onto city street
and roof. Setting on fire
the mind and the heart.
Inside, the weight of the centuries
makes breathing a struggle.
The mind cannot measure
the loss of a child
nor one given up in poverty.
Today we stand, visitors
from global agencies, trying to do good.
Our comfortable lives cling
and smother us like forgotten sins.
Can we absolve ourselves
of the past, when it haunts our present?
Millions of innocents come and go
unknowing and unknown
around the world, we travel
with briefcases full of calculations
and good intentions. No matter
how hard we try.
The sky is still weeping.
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About the Book
Let Shuja Nawaz take you into The Inner World, a poetic travelogue enriched by a lifetime of discovery across the globe, and introduce you to the people and places that inform this delightfully rich trove of imagery and wordplay. A fitting follow-up to his earlier highly treasured Journeys, this volume will entice and enthrall you.
Shuja Nawaz takes you behind the scenes of his own life as a world-renowned strategic and security analyst and advisor of civil and military leaders in the United States, Europe, and South Asia. These poems will surprise and excite you.
About the Author
Shuja Nawaz was born in Chakri Rajgan, Jhelum District, Pakistan, and educated at Gordon College, Rawalpindi (Pakistan), and Columbia University, New York. He has been a newsman for Pakistan Television and has worked at the New York Times, the World Health Organization in Geneva, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. More recently he was the founding director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. His poems have appeared in journals in the United States, Austria, and Pakistan, and he has held readings for audiences in all three countries. His previous book of verse, Journeys, was published by Oxford University Press (1998). He lives with his wife, Seema, in Alexandria, Virginia.