There is in me a longing
For a place
A longing which no place on earth
Can satisfy
Because I long for Home –
There is in me a yearning
For a love
A yearning which no human love
Can satisfy
Because I yearn for the Light –
But, on the other side of
The mountain peak
There is a woman to whom my
Heart belongs…
But there she is, beyond my reach
Just a tear away –
But I do not know how to cry.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
A boy gave to a girl
A string of promises
Each vow was a pearl
And he strung eleven pearls together
On a silver cord
And presented them to her
As a parting gift…
But those who sow must reap.
She gave his string of pearls
To the man she really loved
And he gave it to the woman
He really loved
She gave it to the person
She really loved
Who gave it to the one
Most truly beloved
And so on and on
Until one day
The boy’s string of promises
Found its way
Back to him
Unbroken.
– C.he Chidi Chukwumerije
What is a kingdom to a God?
What is a moon to a sun?
What is thought to intuition?
What do you care?
Just dare!
When you are smashed
By your blasphemous Ambition
You will emerge
From out of the ruins of your kingdom
The shells of your broken personality…
Plant your mind
Like a budding tree
Into the deep dark soil of
Your intuition –
Let the Gardner sow
Let the Gardner tend
Let the Gardner reap.
That is why it took me so long
To realise we were always separating
Our love was always an ending
Never a commencing
A world is not enough for a home.
A grain of sand will do
When love is true.
O who would have known it was a love story
When our swords first clashed?
O who would have known it was a war
When our lips first met?
And Growth.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Catch the song
Of the bird
And sing it with a human voice
And the bird
Is yours –
Catch the songbird
And cage it in your house,
Yet you have it not,
Neither bird nor song –
Love your woman
For what she is
And she will always treasure you
Very specially
Inside her heart and home…
This was the song
That pierced my being
As we stood upon the peak
Of Falkenstein.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
In space, so strange, I observed
That roads abound
Some straight, some crooked, some even swerved
And came around
And then saw I two roads together walking
Side by side they walked, all the while talking
They spoke, they joked, they conversed
But never touched
Yet still as friends they traversed
Countries that notched
They sometimes turned and peered into each other’s eyes
And yet, so strange, they never formed any ties
They diverged, they converged, and again,
For days on days
They changed, they exchanged, each its lane
Yet kept their ways
And on and on they travel on their way to Heaven
Never parting, never touching, sometimes odd, always even…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
When birds touch heaven
All we hear is
Music
And the music
Melts away the frozen tears
In my eyes
And my heart aches for you
But what is done is gone
Heaven and bird and wishing star
Where are you?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
5 minutes of midnight
5000 midnights of missing your moon
may your return be soon
you crawled like a gecko
all over my surface
and you kept on nodding and running
a crowd of summerlovers is heading south
the winter has beached north
airport is breath-short, what’s a goodbye worth?
wherever you go, think of me
like a plane that ever returns
like a bird, like a thought, like seasons and the night.
– 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.
It must be hard for you
To be the subject
– or is it the object?
or is it the heart? –
Of so many poems.
When you stumble, remember:
I love you and you love me
Even if there be no poems
Even if there be no songs
No mountains, no photos, no words…
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The years have raced by
Yet our story is not begun
Two hearts cannot cry
Without reason, and upon
My heart I see the snowclad valley again
The mist, the promise, the joy and the pain
And I know it simply
Surely and firm
Our river runs deeply
Unbroken, fullterm
Be not afraid to follow yon distant star
Until you love me, you won’t know who you are.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 