The earth is not my home
Although she ever seems
To weave fine birds that her heights roam
Like I do in my dreams
The earth is not my home
Although she always tries
To spread bright hues across her dome
Like in my home’s blue skies
The earth is not my home.
However hard she plot
To dull my homesickness with foam
She in the end cannot
The earth is not my home
And yet I wander here
And know that when my end is come,
Strange, still I’ll shed a tear.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
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..
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 world is changing under your watch
There is hatred abroad, fear is at home
Never was it easier to manipulate the future
Crowds of boomerangs are rushing out of the past
Back to the present
When events take this turn, sharply
When all the resentments flower
When cultivated prejudices become seasoned culture
All that’s needed is a reason, a trigger, a spark
There is no hiding place
Everyone has got a grudge to prove
The dark hearts will plunge the world into chaos
And watch the good people tear themselves to pieces
– Who will rise above their shadow
And solve a paradox?
Everybody has been aching for the final conflict
Woe betide us
When it finally comes upon us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Deep music is sailing over the mountains and into the hearts of lonely people far away. Over the mountains – over the mountains – the sight is glorious and gone. Much is gone that was here yesterday. I feel like an old man, waiting to die. But, rather than wait, why don’t I just spread my wings and fly again, like I did when I was young.
The earth is not my home. The earth is not my home, but my way home. Over the mountains, over the mountains, all is happy. It came and went so quickly. But I do not mind. Because what joy did not finish, pain shall. And vice versa.
– 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.
A smile is made up of many wounds
A road is the sum of innumerable restless feet
Love is the pain that pleasures
And victory is defiance in the heart of defeat
But what is spirit?
Spirit is
The stranger that walks the earth
For whom death is birth
Sleepwalker swaying at deep’s edge
Unfulfilled, the promise, unremembered, the pledge.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Arctic thirty
Arctic melting
The smell of oil
Well conflicting
A powerless crew
Against a powerful few
The wealth of the earth
Is in the human heart.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
And we shall sing as though
There be no morning,
Hear the night sway softly along, my dear
My heart is trying to say something
But I’ve forgotten the language
Of my ancestors…
But when we sing, I remember
A time before Christmas and December
When red earth and green hill and blue sky
Were home enough for us.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
THE MOURNERS came, with lots of noise and tears, crying their dry eyes out. No one stopped them. They were left to wail and weep, even though they made all that din.
And the merry-makers, theirs was even more dramatic, their lives are simple, they simply make merry. It does not matter the occasion which has brought them together. Their occupation is to sing and be happy, that is their job, their life. In large numbers they came out to lighten up the place, all three categories of them – the clowns, the eaters and the musicians – merrymaking from dawn until everyone else is gone.
And then of course my old friends, drawn out of the distant mists of childhood, reappeared with appropriately long faces. They murmured here and there about a few breaches of tradition but generally they held their peace. Rice and stew were very plenty, palm wine flowed as if the very trees wept, drowning their complaints in their throats; they left everybody alone and except for their ponderous thoughts nobody remembered their presence.
Two T.V. reporters with their camera men, a few newspaper journalists, a couple of ministers and princes, a former president, a galaxy of celebrities, a throng of socialites and a pride of leaders. Soon the whole place was turned from a place of solemn silence to something like the setting for a television talk-show. Who was going to be interviewed? The departed spirit? I chuckled; good that no-one heard me.
The few people who knew me well wondered at all the noise, all the crowd. Could I, who had so dearly nourished simplicity and quiet while still alive, have really wished my departure to trigger this breach of it? They tried to voice their discontent, but my relatives silenced them with the counter-claim that I had always said that everyone was allowed to do as they wished, and so they did not feel it right to disobey my injunction upon my departure.
Clergy of different religions dragged the aura of their history into my home and solemnly spewed prayers into the air, while everyone closed their eyes and kept on chewing their food. And the liars. They were everywhere, telling lies. The gamblers were gambling. The drunkards were drinking. And the lies the liars told were shattering to the core, for the liars had once been my friends.
But, with love, with compassion, my eyes did rest on one or two visitors in whose heart I saw pain at my departure, in whose eyes I saw the glittering pearls of true tears ever and again wiped away with a sigh. I was sad for them, I wished they could feel the touch of my hand on their shoulder, hear my voice as I whispered to them, I’m still alive.
But what can you do? Each person will react in his own wto death, the victor. Each, according to his or her nature, will bring their character to the fore upon your departure and, symphony or cacophony, there is nothing you can do about it, not anymore.
And so I did not stay there long. I had known it would be like this – who doesn’t? And I had made her promise, she who I loved, who I love, promise me, yes I had made her promise me that she would take my body away, far away. And far away, in the heart of the beautiful woods, she and the children we bore, now adults, and our closest closest friends, they stood in a circle around my body. And though they did not see me, they sensed me, sensed that I was there, standing too in the circle with them, our unbroken circle of love. Far away from the noise and noisy thoughts of the world.
One of them played a flute, and the flute was enough, and spoke the language of our hearts; and every thought they thought of me was a thought of love, and my soul was full. And my spirit sang.
And soon the body, old and tired, rested deep in the cool depth of mother earth. There was a prayer my love was praying, and that was when I heard it, the other flute, the heavenly flute, it came from far away, from high high above, gripped my heart, and I saw the way home. At that moment her eyes opened and her love held me one more time, then with a gentle whimsical sigh she let me go.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.y
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 