They say a time will come
When upon this earth
Evolution will girdle its gains
Back again around its girth
Many a wondrous tree
That we cherish and deeply love
Will, year by year, with time
Evolving slow dissolve
Many a beloved animal
Continents, rivers, plateaux
Even man, the so-called crown
Yes, our body too will go
And one day, even she
Heaven’s gate and heaven’s door
The lovely lovely rose
On earth will be no more.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Like a cow
Eschewing its thoughts
The worship bells
Choked my throat
Penned me to my pagy leaf
Sunday mournings
Have my sins been so many?
Stop confessing guiltily
What you profess so
Guiltlessly.
Monday is the new Sunday.
If you want to meet God,
Look for Him on Monday –
On Sunday, Saturday and Friday He is far far away,
Tired of our hypocrisy.
-Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
When you feel the thing
Most sought
The thing most loved
The thing most needed
The thing most sensed, most uncomprehended
The thing most yours
Approaching you…
Do not walk faster
Do not let over-excitement hurry you
Do not abandon your rhythmic pace
As you reach out to grab it
But just keep on moving
Steadily back Home.
We wander, we wander, we wander…
Everywhere we wander –
Never hurrying
Never worrying
Never tarrying
Ever merrying.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ONCE UPON a time, in a village near Enugu, nestling in the luscious green valleys between the plateaus of the Udi hills, in south-eastern Nigeria, there settled a city-dweller, a young urbanite, come to hide from fellow city dwellers and indeed the city itself in the quiet of this peaceful village.
At first the quiet laze of the unhurried village folk was a great delight to him and a welcome change from the impersonal razzmatazz of the city. However, after some time there arose in him an itch, product of a silent but powerful addiction to city-life which, unknown to him, had become a part of his constitution.
The restless itch became exacerbated to the point where he was about to abandon all hope of a more fulfilling existence in the rural and resort back to the urban.
That was when he met the villager.
Previously he had only seen him fleetingly, as he went to or returned from his farm, presunrise and postsunset, without ever clearly discerning his features or exchanging a word or direct gaze with him.
But did dusk descend later than usual upon this fateful day? Or did the villager’s own restlessness propel him out of his farm, setting him homebound, earlier than usual?
It could be anything.
But as the city-dweller looked up from his front door, there he saw the familiar fleeting figure… only this time he was much more visible in the hanging lights of mesmerizingly tantalisingly unhurried sunset.
For the first time he saw the villager’s features and, lo and behold, he was a young man just like himself; but his face appeared to have been chiselled out of smooth, hard stone, fired in flames like metal ore, and then brought to life by a soft breath from heaven. For the eyes which momentarily seized the city-dweller’s, though set in the most rugged of features, were gentle and kind. Suddenly they seemed so similar, these two very unsimilar men.
Only for a moment did these two men lock gaze and then the villager looked again ahead of him and, sack in hand, hoe slung over his shoulder, sturdily yet gracefully walked on home, a half-spring, half-unspring, in his heels, a man freely born to farm his village land, oblivious to everything else, happy and content in his destiny.
The next day the city-dweller packed his belongings and returned to his home in the city. He had found what he came to the village searching for. He had found and become the villager in his heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I have heard that a new star
Is coming…
I hear it every time I return to the
Earth –
Somebody wrote it down a long time
Ago –
And everytime I reincarnate
I am confronted anew with the fact
Of the coming of a new star
A radiant star brighter than the sun
Filled with the power of all the seven heavens…
I have seen this Star.
I saw it once before I was born
I saw it from atop a Mountain before I was unborn
And I have no doubt that one day
It will have come much too close to the earth
For us to be able to do any other thing
Than burn down, burn up or become eternally burning flames
Of spiritual light, paradisiacal fire
Beyond the understanding of a new generation
And a new earth.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The vast spaces of silence
Within a human heart
The sky is not vast enough
To engulf this silence
The sea is itself absorbed and lost
Within this silence
Where are the stars?
Where are all the stars?
The stars are so numerous
Yet see all those vast unlit spaces
In the night-sky
The sky is dark
But my heart is vaster
And as the silence spreads and spreads
And engulfs my Soul
The light is lit
See, see, the light is doubly lit…!
Silence. There is this silence
Inside my heart
And she told me it was simple love –
Together we stand.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My pain plays with me
My pain stays with me
My pain prays with me
When I pray…
My pain visits me
My pain kisses me
My pain teaches me
How to pray…
I forget you, I forget me
I have to, because without you and without me
I know no pain, even when I pray.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THEY HAD always had an eye for each other, ever since their primary school days. Naturally, neither had ever given even a hint of this to the other, but each had carried his and her own slumbering love silently, unspoken, unsubstantiated, deep within each heart.
The primary school days ended and they separated, each going to a different secondary school. Six years of separation and in that time neither had any idea where the other was. And yet their love continued to grow, to wax soft and strong, tender and untouched and sacred, in those recesses of the heart of which even the mind itself is barely conscious.
Every once in a while she would float into his thoughts and he would remember and vaguely yearn and long… then forget again and continue, like other youths, with the demanding task of growing up – until the next bout of longing.
Nor did she ever completely forget him either. And being genuinely of the deep female gender, her ability to call forth his memory in her heart was even stronger. Often she wandered where he was; was he still alive? Was he fine? Was he in love? Would they ever meet again? Would he recognize her? Did he ever think of her? There was no reason why he should; he had hardly ever looked at her in their childhood days. Foolish me, she would think, dreaming hopelessly…
Thus did the years pass by.
He grew up into a young man at the tail end of his youth, matured by love affairs, ideological battles and heartbreaks come and gone.
She grew up similarwise, and if he had loved deeply, she had loved twice as deeply… and if he had believed blindly, she had believed even more fiercely… and if his heart had been broken, hers had been dispersed, ground, into the winds.
Thus did they suddenly meet again in the university.
Who recognized whom? Who was more – or less – eager to let show the fact that silent, unconfessed love had long smouldered in fiercely hidden embers deep within the heart?
Often he would visit her in her room in the evenings and they would crack many jokes, and slowly came they to also like one another. But if he was seeking company with which to cure his loneliness and erase the memories and after-effects of earlier heartbreaks, then she for similar reasons was reluctant to unite again too quickly with a member of the male gender. It was a subtle cat and mouse affair, nothing ever actually spoken, yet both being fully aware of exactly what was going on – and while these things were happening silently in their hearts, outwardly they continued to crack their friendly jokes.
But tensions build and pressures mount and something somewhere must always finally give. And, for hesitation, the tide untaken at the flood, it sort of wilted and softly broke, the potential lost its momentum, the attraction lost its orientation, and it died between the two of them. Gradually they began to see less and less of one another…
One year then passed, during which their paths did not once cross.
She had meanwhile exchanged her room for a new one which she shared with another female student with whom she had quickly become good friends. But never had she voiced it to anyone, not even to her good friend and roommate, that there was someone whom she silently, painfully, loved. –
And no-one could have prepared her for the shock she got when she one evening opened the door of her room upon a visitor’s knock and saw him standing there. They stared at one another with bewildered looks of surprise on their faces.
And then, from behind her, from deeper inside the room they shared, the happy voice of her room mate called out loudly, brightly:
“Oh, Zubi – hi! Finally… you’ve come.” And, bounding forward with barely suppressed excitement, her roommate turned to her of whom this story is about and, taking Zubi’s hand, said:
“Efe, meet the guy I’ve been telling you about… and, Zubi, meet Efe, my room mate.” –
With pain almost impossible to bear, Efe watched her roommate Awa hug, and be hugged, tightly, by him, Zubi, the silent owner of her heart.
Over the next couple of weeks it became clear to her that Zubi and Awa were in a serious relationship and loved each other deeply.
Nor was there anything for her room mate Awa to know or ever suspect in connection with the two childhood friends, Zubi and Efe, for there was nothing that existed or ever had existed between them, was there?
They were just , as always, two casual acquaintants who happened to have known each other in their childhood days and who, today, whenever they met in Awa and Efe’s room would, as usual, aye, as they had always done, simply crack light friendly jokes with one another.
And if they felt anything else, anything deeper, for one another perhaps, then it spoke not, nor loudly, but remained, silent, as it continued to reside in the deep quiet places within their hearts.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Give me you.
Before you begin to wonder
What you are, remember
That each star and each season
Is nature’s gift for a reason
And you, dear spirit, your blossoming heart
Is spirit’s gift to the gift of art
It is the art of being you.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I saw a bell
Fall under the spell
Of a magic wand
In a magician’s hand
And he turned the bell into a man
Walking up and down the land
Ringing out a message to everyone
But only a few will understand
I tell you what.
Affiliation to nationality and religion, gender, class and race
Will always be more important to the human race
Than being human, our common lot.
So now the bells, they are ringing
The hearts, they are singing
The times, they are bringing
A Message of Hope.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 