Irgendwann
Muß Mann zum Mann
Werden
Ohne Beschwerden
Das wagen
Was ihm im Magen
Liegt
Und schwer wiegt
Farbe bekennen
Ist leicht
Und macht schwer
Geist erkennen
Wiegt schwer
Und macht leicht
Masken durchblicken lassen
Denn Masken sind Rassen
Löwe, du bist auch
Liebe. Aus deinem Bauch
Brülle nicht nur
Du bist nicht nur Tier.
Innerem zustimme
Zeige das Intime
Was nutzt, ungelesen,
Dein wahres Wesen?
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Und sie flog, verflog
Ein Jahr wie eine Nacht
Flüstern und atmen, leise und laut
Und alle meine Gedanken
Und alle meine Empfindungen
Meine Gefühle, meine Wünsche
Bedürfnisse, Geheimnisse, geheime Schritte
Alles waren Fußabdrücke im fallenden Schnee
Lautlos.
Und alles trankst du auf
Wie Wein…
Das habe ich am meisten genossen
Daß du mir alles lautlos nahmst
Gabst mir nichts im Gegenzug zurück
Es fehlt noch ein Tag, dann ist das Jahr um –
Auch ihn trinke, ganz und tief
Denn ich will komplett verschwinden.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
It began as a running thought
What I ought and ought not perhaps
Know, do or think
It began as a bowl of poems
But when the curtain lifted
I saw it was one poem.
This is the path of light
The curving straight line
Nothing is too far, nothing is too near
I shall get there.
Lovely are the snowflakes outside the
Airbus windows
Soon we shall rollbacktaxirunaway and
Take off –
And I shall remember the snow
And take along with me the love of friends
Into the new year.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
They say a time will come
When upon this earth
Evolution will girdle its gains
Back again around its girth
Many a wondrous tree
That we cherish and deeply love
Will, year by year, with time
Evolving slow dissolve
Many a beloved animal
Continents, rivers, plateaux
Even man, the so-called crown
Yes, our body too will go
And one day, even she
Heaven’s gate and heaven’s door
The lovely lovely rose
On earth will be no more.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Like a cow
Eschewing its thoughts
The worship bells
Choked my throat
Penned me to my pagy leaf
Sunday mournings
Have my sins been so many?
Stop confessing guiltily
What you profess so
Guiltlessly.
Monday is the new Sunday.
If you want to meet God,
Look for Him on Monday –
On Sunday, Saturday and Friday He is far far away,
Tired of our hypocrisy.
-Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
When you feel the thing
Most sought
The thing most loved
The thing most needed
The thing most sensed, most uncomprehended
The thing most yours
Approaching you…
Do not walk faster
Do not let over-excitement hurry you
Do not abandon your rhythmic pace
As you reach out to grab it
But just keep on moving
Steadily back Home.
We wander, we wander, we wander…
Everywhere we wander –
Never hurrying
Never worrying
Never tarrying
Ever merrying.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
ONCE UPON a time, in a village near Enugu, nestling in the luscious green valleys between the plateaus of the Udi hills, in south-eastern Nigeria, there settled a city-dweller, a young urbanite, come to hide from fellow city dwellers and indeed the city itself in the quiet of this peaceful village.
At first the quiet laze of the unhurried village folk was a great delight to him and a welcome change from the impersonal razzmatazz of the city. However, after some time there arose in him an itch, product of a silent but powerful addiction to city-life which, unknown to him, had become a part of his constitution.
The restless itch became exacerbated to the point where he was about to abandon all hope of a more fulfilling existence in the rural and resort back to the urban.
That was when he met the villager.
Previously he had only seen him fleetingly, as he went to or returned from his farm, presunrise and postsunset, without ever clearly discerning his features or exchanging a word or direct gaze with him.
But did dusk descend later than usual upon this fateful day? Or did the villager’s own restlessness propel him out of his farm, setting him homebound, earlier than usual?
It could be anything.
But as the city-dweller looked up from his front door, there he saw the familiar fleeting figure… only this time he was much more visible in the hanging lights of mesmerizingly tantalisingly unhurried sunset.
For the first time he saw the villager’s features and, lo and behold, he was a young man just like himself; but his face appeared to have been chiselled out of smooth, hard stone, fired in flames like metal ore, and then brought to life by a soft breath from heaven. For the eyes which momentarily seized the city-dweller’s, though set in the most rugged of features, were gentle and kind. Suddenly they seemed so similar, these two very unsimilar men.
Only for a moment did these two men lock gaze and then the villager looked again ahead of him and, sack in hand, hoe slung over his shoulder, sturdily yet gracefully walked on home, a half-spring, half-unspring, in his heels, a man freely born to farm his village land, oblivious to everything else, happy and content in his destiny.
The next day the city-dweller packed his belongings and returned to his home in the city. He had found what he came to the village searching for. He had found and become the villager in his heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I have heard that a new star
Is coming…
I hear it every time I return to the
Earth –
Somebody wrote it down a long time
Ago –
And everytime I reincarnate
I am confronted anew with the fact
Of the coming of a new star
A radiant star brighter than the sun
Filled with the power of all the seven heavens…
I have seen this Star.
I saw it once before I was born
I saw it from atop a Mountain before I was unborn
And I have no doubt that one day
It will have come much too close to the earth
For us to be able to do any other thing
Than burn down, burn up or become eternally burning flames
Of spiritual light, paradisiacal fire
Beyond the understanding of a new generation
And a new earth.
– 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.
My pain plays with me
My pain stays with me
My pain prays with me
When I pray…
My pain visits me
My pain kisses me
My pain teaches me
How to pray…
I forget you, I forget me
I have to, because without you and without me
I know no pain, even when I pray.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 