Might is not right –
Right is might.
This right is not the opppsite of left
Is not the right of fraternity bereft
This right is conscience
Is humanity in its essence
And the path to its Height.
– This right Is MIGHT.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
English
SEVENTEEN POEMS
If I wrote seventeen poems
In one word
Would you understand my language?
If I wrote one word
Sung one love-song
In seventeen poems
Would you understand my language?
What if they were eight?
What if they were eighteen?
If every human smile were a poem
Every laugh a song
Every look a promise
If every human word were silence
You would not need seventeen poems
To understand me
Just one.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
LONELY, BROTHER
I have a lonely brother, born of a single mother and father, lonely and alone, trudging patiently home through the land of snow-mountains and smoke-forests and sandy deserts, not to forget the bottomless sea. He has few friends, for few comprehend him, even though he treasures the goal also all so alone. I want to help him, but I do not know how to, nor does he always accept help. I know only that, in the end, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. Are you lonely, brother? Nobody is ever alone. An angel, a beast or a solitary star – one of these is always there with you and me. If I am not my brother’s keeper, who is? And whose keeper then am I? I guess I keep again our second goal.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FARSIGHTEDNESS
There is a Nigerian saying
What a child cannot see from a treetop
An adult can see from the ground
They usually say it with a gentle smile
The boy that I was, the child now in me
Was nourished by my mother’s love
While the man I was becoming, who now I am
Was nurtured by my father’s severity
So when they say true love is severity
And severity is sometimes the truest of love
I guess I know now, in retrospect,
What they mean to say between the lines
It is impossible to see both sides –
Day and Night – simultaneously
You have to experience them one by one
And then piece it together in your mind.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ALL ALONE
Transported by the tides of love
Inspired by the love of One
I sat down in a cove,
All alone.
My heart gushed forth with deepest love
For I love two women, not one;
Thus pause I in a cove,
All alone.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
FRIENDSHIP
To laugh heart to heart always. To cry heart to heart always. No heart on today’s earth can laugh completely without first crying completely, because only that Pain can unbolt a bolted heart – the pain of friendship. Friendship does not come easy, even when you think it just popped up right from the very first moment – that was merely the seed. Now you have to plant it, water it, tend it, nurture it patiently – and, hopefully, finally reap the fruit and the flower, after the pain… the pain of friendship. I will always be your friend, I vow. When it grows dark, remember my words…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE DREAMER
Sometimes it seems
As though the valley were the
Mountain-peak,
The mountain-peak the valley
Sometimes it seems
That to arrive at the valley
I must first arrive at the mountain-peak
And, sometimes, to arrive
At the mountain-peak, I must
Arrive at the valley
Which is the valley
Which the mountain and
Which the peak? –
Sometimes, Baby, it seems
As though to find you I must leave you…
And sometimes it seems as though
When I want to leave you
I’ll only end up again by your side
Sometimes, when I am Dreaming
I think I am awake –
But I have never once thought myself a dreamer,
Not even while I dreamt.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE GIRL WHO SAW TRUTH
There was a girl
Who read the story of the Wild-Horse Mountain
And who then went to find
The writer of the story
And question him thus:
GIRL:
Is this story true, of the lady who went to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain and found the winged horses?
POET:
Yes, it is true.
GIRL:
Really?
POET:
Truly.
GIRL:
How do you know?
POET:
Because after the lady had visited the Land of Tomorrow awhile with Sram, he flew her in the night back home to our land again, and the next morning she told us the story…
GIRL:
What happened next?
POET:
Well, nobody believed her… except I. I did.
GIRL:
But why?
POET:
Why did I believe her?
GIRL:
No. Why did nobody else believe her?
POET:
Well… because they searched for proofs… and found none, at least none that made any sense to our minds. Upon hearing her story, we all sailed over to the Island of Wild-Horse Mountain, to see if we could corroborate her story. Also the other six people were still missing and we wanted to find them. But we found Nothing. No horses, no green valley, no horse-prints in the ground, anywhere, and no bodies… not the bodies of the six missing people, or bones, clothes, shoes, bags, articles, anything! All we saw, on the shore of the desolate, rocky island, was a beached boat. So, the people said she was mad. They came up with the theory that she had run mad and killed her friends at sea, or she had lost her friends at sea, which in turn had driven her crazy…
GIRL:
What?!
POET:
Yes, indeed. In the end, they put her in an asylum, where she finally died…
GIRL (sobbing):
What country is this wicked place?
POET:
Oh, it’s the country in which I live. My country.
GIRL:
What’s the name of your country then?
POET:
It is called “The Land of Modern Minds”.
GIRL:
The Land of Modern Minds? I have never heard of this country.
POET:
When you grow up, you will ear a lot of it. You will live there too.
GIRL:
Never! Never!
POET:
(smiles and says nothing)
GIRL (still weeping):
Oh, that poor lady! Killed for saying the truth; such an exhilarating, new, promising truth too. But… but… but is there a possibility that… that she maybe just had a dream?…
POET (smiling):
The same possibility that, right now, you are also dreaming.
GIRL:
But I am not dreaming!
POET:
You can only assume that until you Awake…
GIRL (after a pause… thoughtfully):
Thank you, Poet, for talking to me.
POET:
Don’t you want to know what happened to the lady after she died?
GIRL?
After? But no. It does not matter, does it?
POET:
But, yes, it does matter. When people die, they start to live…
GIRL:
Is this the truth?
POET:
Yes, dear Lady, it is.
GIRL:
So, are we dead now?
POET:
We are Partly Asleep.
GIRL:
I believe you, Sram. Please, forsake me not…
POET:
That I will Never do!!!
Then they embraced, and did weep
And woke up each
Gently from their deep sleep
On opposite sides of the world.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
RIGIDIFICATION
Basically to do with respect – or the lack of it. A disrespect that has its roots in an unexamined, unquestioned presumption which a person has grown up with from childhood.
The presumption becomes the basis for all further interactions with and reflections upon the people or places to which the presumption applies. This presumption forms the bedrock of the basic attitudes the person develops towards the object of consideration. It stands like a wall in the face of a reappraisal of the people, object, situation or place; it is wielded as a weapon, held up as a shield in one’s dealings with them.
A common tendency towards lethargy might then prevent one from examining the presumption, which may also be called a prejudice. To examine the prejudice means facing the danger of encountering and acknowledging its incorrectness or partial incorrectness, and taking the trouble to build up a new view of and relationship with the discriminated – and thus making an about-face.
So it becomes a matter of pride. And, passed on from generation to generation, it will stand through the centuries like the Rock of Gibraltar, and no-one will know its beginning anymore.
Pride is a drug. It offers you comfort and succour, with gentle paws and steely claws that entrap what they embrace.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
MIX UP
White men complain
Of losing their women
Black women complain
Of losing their men
White women complain
Of losing their men
Asian men complain
Of losing their women…
From race to race
Place to place
Everyone is sure
Everyone is impure
I guess we’re all lost
I guess we’re all found
I guess we’re all free
I guess we’re all bound
I guess we all complain
I guess we’re all afraid
I guess we all know
How best to get laid.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 