A bad follower
Will never make a good leader
Because the greater part of leading
Is following.
When you are leading a people
Pause a while
To listen to the wind a-bellowing
And understand the meaning of the road
You yourself are following.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A year has passed
I hear the gasping of another young harmattan
Hanging in the air.
A growing quietness
Encompassing every pain
No rain.
Distance becomes a memory
The past becomes a story
To be told and relished
Retold embellished
With detachment.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Let your life bite
And bite deep, incisive and tight
Into the lives of others,
Strangers, foes and brothers –
Let it bite
And be felt right
Inside their core
Let them ask for more
When you’re gone
And they’re left alone.
Even though now they complain
For your bite awakens inner pain,
Yet bite deep, bite deep,
When it is time to reap
They will harvest laughter
And laughter after laughter
Because you bit them not with hate,
But in love the seeds of lofty fate
You did dutifully implant –
So let them rant.
Bite, my son, and be bitten,
Smite and be smitten,
Submit to the urge
That bids your river surge
Over all obstacles, my boy,
Breaking all shackles, each like a toy
Life’s battle you must enjoy
It is the repeat of Troy.
And you’ll leave behind upon the earth
By the time death has slain birth
A quiet legacy of truth
And immortal youth.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A leaf…
Trembling in
The wind –
I
Through life move
With half-open eyes
That fail to see the other
Side…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Don’t follow
When the road is hollow
Which they ply –
In your heart is sky.
The answer will sound in your heart
Long after your mother and I depart
Run your immortal run
A time once upon,
You my daughter and you my son.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ONCE UPON a time, there was a bird.
It flew and flew for a long time, over great distances, over lakes, mountains and forests, over deserts, countries and valleys, over vast oceans and across mighty fields of thought.
One day, as it was flying over such a field of thought, it looked down and saw a little girl playing in the red-brown soil of Owerri, a small town in south-eastern Nigeria. Dressed in a short, tie-dyed west African boubou and skipping merrily on bare feet behind her father’s house, the little girl threw thoughts up into the air, bright blue and yellow thoughts, the way other children throw up ribbons and balls. And when the thoughts went into the air, they would take wing and fly high into the sky, so high up that not even the bird could see the height into which they soared.
One by one they would then, after a long while, reappear in the visible firmament as they began their downward flight to the girl. Upon their descent the thoughts were bigger, brighter, more beautiful, and they all bore a crown on their heads. This the bird could see.
By the time the thoughts returned to the girl, her father’s house had washed away and she had grown into a woman, a young and beautiful woman with a silent sorrow on her face, a deep question in her eyes, a lovely, innocent yet knowing smile upon her lips. For in the period in which her thoughts had flown to heaven, many men and women had loved and left her. Some had loved her too little and some had loved her too much. But none had loved her enough. Now she stood there with the universal question in her heart; the search for her destiny.
A song. Beautiful was the song that came out of the bird, descended along with the woman’s returning thoughts. One by one, her thoughts alighted on her breast, folded their wings around her like in an embrace and dissolved into her. As each thought disappeaed back into her, her eyes became brighter, the sadness upon her ebony features faded away, little by little, the question gradually disappeared, and she gradually grew up… until the last thought had reunited itself with her, and she stood there, tall, pretty, mature, clear.
Then did she hear the song… the song of the bird… it pierced her heart like a bird’s beak penetrating into the heart of a wild honey flower and told her wild and gentle stories of things forgotten and remembered. Like the sunflower her heart exploded open and she looked up…
And she saw the sun!
And while she revelled in the sight of the sun, for since attaining adulthood she had not noticed the sun anymore, the bird flapped it’s wings again and flew on, flew away. By the time the woman, filled with the sun, looked around in the sky for the source of the lovely song that made her look up in the first place and awakened her to the sun…, the bird was long gone.
Once upon a time, there was a bird… on and on it flew, over fields of thought and gentle growth. Simple is her song:
Remember the sun, look up –
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
From my book of inspirational short stories and anecdotes:
THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING MORE
Do you see
Those two boats
On the river?
Two brothers
Will row, side by side
Into the sunset.
One will dock
On the golden banks
While the other
Will row on
And they will wave
Goodbye to each other.
This is the way
Of the world
Of love and loss
Of meeting and parting
Of friendship and memory
Of life and death.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Picture:
My brother Kwame and I
University of Ibadan, Nigeria
1995
A few weeks later, he passed on in a car accident.
This was our last picture together.
How many go ahead
Who yet remember to erect road signs?
How many who break bread
Remember to leave a trail of crumbs behind?
I did not when I was ahead
But realised it not until I too fell behind.
Your hole yeast bread
Won’t rise to your comfort in lonely times.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Truth undresses
Conscience pricks
Contemplation caresses
What conversation can’t fix.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Spirit flame in the world of it-doesn’t-matter
Radiant star never-the-less in the darkness
Night is a blessing for lost dreamers
It is the world-wanderer’s permanent address
Night makes the seeing blind
And the insight sharp as blade
The fire within will warm the cold
Feet of dew
Young mind, never mind
The world well and shiny made
It is for the old
You were born to bring the new.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 