There was a girl
the fruit of her labour
Was the world
With a cry of pain and a shout of joy
She gave birth to the world
And primitive was the world
Harsh the lips that burned her nipples
Rough the tongue that broke her word
And we’re still here today
The earth is still not enough
Mother has become a stranger
The outcasts have grasped their destiny.
-Che Chidi Chukwumerije..
Those thoughts don’t disappear
They keep living somewhere
In you… in me… in someone far away
From here…
Those thoughts don’t disappear
They keep working somewhere
In your world… in my world… or in a far away world
You don’t see and you don’t hear…
Oh, those quiet thoughts
That you’re thinking
Somebody’s picking
Round and round it goes, nothing’s new
And nothing’s hidden and nothing’s lost
Reap the sower must
Those thoughts, they don’t just disappear
They keep on growing somewhere
And one day… when you least expect it…
Oh oh oh, they’re back again in your life
Oh oh oh, they’re back again with their maker.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
My heart weeps, a baby
Another mountain stream
Seeking a lake
After which it longs, a Lover
Longing for completion
During the course of a life-long journey
Into the eternal sea.
My heart cries for that presence
That was his quiet audience
On a walk across a Valley
In a Cumbrian mystery –
Spirit, I know you can move
Through time and space. Find me, do,
Meet me, be with me, deeply,
No matter where I wander
Or rest my head at night – stay close, meander
Like a melody in my Soul…
I’ve run out of control
Searching for my Goal.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The Green House
The Green Out-house
The Green Backyard
The Green Yard back –
Green green green
Green in the wind
A better world.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The red cloud o’er the mountain is top
Beneath is white and the mountain-cap
A bird sings just one single note
O’er and o’er by rote:
To give is to get is to give is to get
O’er and o’er and o’er again
To give is to get is to give is to get
Sans chorus and sans refrain.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A life I’ve lived before?
Or just a summer lore?
These Cumbrian hills that float past me
Fade away, misty, like a memory
If greens could speak of all they hold
Unbroken sap, unspoken, old
Unwoken, untapped, a silent audience
Events absorbed in quiet clairaudience
What tales untold of eras lost
Would now unfold, unthawed of frost
Unbound by dust; behold, forever green
The mist has parted as though it had never been
Ullswater, whose water first watered your past
Whose feet were those that were the last
To tread that dry ground that is now your wet floor
Before that time vanished foreverevermore?
The boatride, like a gentle slide, into a strange intuition
A short sad season of startling fruition
Goodbye again, Watervalley, deep within your heart
Remember still my footsteps, there they did start
Mist and misty, mistier than thought
Misty mysteries yet they are not.
A heart is a storehouse of long forgotten memories
That sometimes arise cloaked as imagined stories
What do I have more precious than my heart,
My past’s library, my future’s chart.
Silently we walk, simple human beings
Yet mightier each than the sum of all worldly things.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
(One of my Lake District poems)
A beautiful green palm-tree
Not the dark green but the bright yellow-green
That gleams in the day-light sheen
Against the azure-blue canvass of heaven, sky and a dream
An awaking dream; am I awake or do I dream?
I could almost be another green palm-tree.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
All I can do
Is just sing my songs
Between currents of dawn
I am a tree
The Iroko said to the ground
I cannot be grass too
Nor wind that comes and goes
And sings with birds and scents
And distant tales.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I feel you close
All those of you
Who love the rose
Within you too,
When you’re near
All is fair
As virtue
When you’re gone
Or I the bridge
Have again undone,
Built a ridge,
I forget you,
Call you untrue
And intrigue…
But deep within
My human heart,
Beneath the skin,
Another part
Still remembers
In the fire’s embers
Our start.
There’s more in nature
Than what we see
Behind your second nature
Search quietly
There’ll you’ll find
Behind your mind
Your first nature…
The one that feels
The beings unseen
The one that heals
In the worlds between
Every night
Weeps for the Light
Unseen.
I feel you close
All those of you
Who love the rose
Within you too –
I know you’re near
I almost hear
And feel you…
A bond of love
Unbreakable
Linked to the Dove
A sacred table –
All those who know
Don’t let it show…
The world calls it a Fable.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
A little fairy, a lonely elf
All by herself
Hiding in the fields of blue
Quietly watching you
A little baby in your arms
Falls for her charms
Smiles at her and says to her:
Friend, do you live here?
The years will fly past like a sun
Running from the dawn
The child becomes an adult too
Could be me or you
Will saunter past these fields some day,
Eyes fixed on the way
Sees not the elf, hears not her whisper:
You I remember.
Then falls in love, a child is born
That for which we yearn
The adult wonders what it’s saying
And with whom it’s playing
Sees not that beings have blessed their home
Where unseen they roam
For oft a fairy close by whiles
When a baby smiles.
We take our walks, babies in arm
Marvel at their charm
We watch them smile at lonesome grass –
Energy or mass?
Something arrests their attention
Seen by them alone
An elf informs them wistfully:
You too will forget me.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 