Of Adulation

WRITING IS THE HAPPINESS OF SORROW

~ Che ~ 8 Comments

Writing is the happiness
Of sorrow

The immortal spirit
Of mortality

The voice that needs
No mouth

The painting whose canvas is
The reader’s mind.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

———-

In 2013 I gave myself the luxury of publishing two books of poems on my birthday – today 6th April.
One is titled “WRITING IS THE HAPPINESS OF SORROW“, the idea for which came with the poem above which I wrote some time ago.
The other is “THE BEAUTIFUL ONES HAVE BEEN BORN” which is specific to my continent Africa.
In 2015 I reprinted them.

A THOUSAND ETERNITIES

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I see the sun rising
The horizon is no longer far
We have met each other halfway
The horizon is now the road.

The smell of your breast
Is a miracle
The touch of your breath
Is a poem

That ceases never to enchant
The undulating sands beneath which
My desert is overpowered
By your thousand flowers…

I am born anew
When you gently wake me up
In the night
Just to look into my eyes…

Heaven.

Heaven be your name
And though memoryless we wander
Far away in this blue grass under
The heavens,

Yet you pull me up where I see you
Calling me, reminding me, admonishing me
With your eyes in the middle
Of the night.

Heaven be our home
A thousand eternities from now
Far Beyond yonder horizon
We see.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THROUGH CHEQUERED FIELDS

~ Che ~ 9 Comments

There’s a woman I met
When the night was dark and long
And she walked, she walked along
Alongside me…

And she walked and walked with me
Through fields of chequered thoughts
And she said, she said everyday to me:
We belong together…

Together, wherever you go
Together, wherever you are
Together, however life fares
Together we walk
Where fears are hard to hide
She walks within my heart, golden torch bearer
And love forever mine.

I say it everyday to her:
Thank you, Love
But all she does, when all is grey
Is walk, she walks within my heart.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

DAWN

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I feel dawn
Like a song
I hear
Not with an outer ear

Like a light
Long before rosy twilight

Like an intuition
A budding perception
A forgetting
And a remembering

Like new birth
Upon the earth.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

INVISIBLE WINGS

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Fluttering somewhere, unseen
Fluttering softly, fluttering quick,
Fluttering, fluttering, an invisible being
Floats over quietly with a candlestick
And a flaming crown around a little wick,
Slightly seen, partly unseen…

They float, candle, being, and candleflame
Over the heads of a thousand men and more…
And alight gently upon a budding dame
Who, touched by an angel, bears a look never seen before

And poets and musicians and men
Draw from her look inspiration again

And again.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije

WHEN THE MOON IS GONE…

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Like a soulful cry
On its own
Gradually spreading itself out
Through the vastness
Of the heavenly skies
So is the loneliness in my heart
When the moon is gone…

The hour of the full moon is gone
The setting suns
Leave moonless skies behind
Deep into the night
Once again…

Yet we bear it
Because
After the moon is gone
A different charm rules the night…
Until the moon
Another Moon
Another one
Comes again –

But I will never love this way again.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

MOUNTAINS LIQUID, MOUNTAINS LUMINOUS

~ Che ~ 4 Comments

Peoples of different origins
Colonised my heart
And raised therein an edifice
Of loneliness
And treasured dreams…

Look now at the liquid mountains
Luminous and eternal
Which have become my spirit’s
Backbone
Liquid mountains of moving light…

When I say I love you
I mean it…
When I say I love you
I mean it…
When I say I love you
I mean it…

Inside each liquid mountain
Within each luminous elevation
Is a heart
Of gold, of fire, of love…

So love me forever, my dear.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

PURELY, IT IS A MATTER OF LOVE

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The dance of the woman in the market
Unloosed poetry
Here it goes, there she flows
Away…

Again I was baffled
Again I was moved
And asked myself one another time:
How many rivers
Meander within one woman?

The things that men desire in women
Are nothing compared to the things
Which women only know in their silent, sleeping heart
That they can give…

And, purely, it was something
That was in paradise on the day
That you and I were born
Children of the rose
Children of love.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

THIS CANDLE, THIS CRADLE, THIS CROWN

~ Che ~ 2 Comments

Shone the New Star
Like a Comet
Blessed tail a-resting nobly
Upon the manger
A guardian, a herald
Of Eternal Love
Of Eternal Light
And I saw a smile
‘Twas an Angel singing
And a Child with serious eyes
Smiling greetingly
Into a world full of strange creatures
Long lost –

A candle is re-lit
A cradle is rocked with overflowing light
The Bearer of the Crown
Came simply
And left simply
And nobody can know completely
How much love He had
How much pain He felt
How much He loved and hurt
A Stranger
A Hero
The Incarnation of Love Itself
The Love of God
Yea, Thou art He
Jesus, the Christ
The Son of the Living God!
Amen.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.

FOR WE ARE ONE

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Your face I know
But not your name
Your faces I know
But I know not your Names…

We meet everyday, everywhere
Our vibrations, our radiations never were parted
From one another –
I know you, I love you, you are my Home
On earth.

Hold me, Song of Eternity, like we were
One.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.