Don’t follow
When the road is hollow
Which they ply –
In your heart is sky.
The answer will sound in your heart
Long after your mother and I depart
Run your immortal run
A time once upon,
You my daughter and you my son.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Do you see
Those two boats
On the river?
Two brothers
Will row, side by side
Into the sunset.
One will dock
On the golden banks
While the other
Will row on
And they will wave
Goodbye to each other.
This is the way
Of the world
Of love and loss
Of meeting and parting
Of friendship and memory
Of life and death.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Picture:
My brother Kwame and I
University of Ibadan, Nigeria
1995
A few weeks later, he passed on in a car accident.
This was our last picture together.
It was autumn when we met
Trees were reddening
Leaves were falling
Hearts were aching to spill the truth
Autumn, autumn
Cooler nights
Autumn, autumn
Mistier heights
It was autumn when we met
Days were shortening
Eyes were focusing more sharply
On every strange new thing –
To discern the whole truth
Before the snow-blanket
Stored any promises
About to be made –
Diamonds and promises are forever.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
To make a promise to love another person, forever, and then to break this promise and say, Goodbye baby… awakens within the hearts of everybody who hears of it a memory of their own broken and unspoken promises.
Noise everywhere. Noise in my head. Noise even in the centre of silence. Lovers are what sages once were, and vice versa. Heartbreak and promises, togetherness, farewells and silence are all trying to resolve themselves within our hearts.
I should never have told you that I loved you, but how could I but not tell the truth? Evermore I understand the importance of silence. Our hearts are broken in silence: a small token to pay for the new powers which soon and steadily awaken in silence within us.
One who can bear the pain of heartbreak; one who can say goodbye and yet always be there; one who can preserve promises in silence unbroken; will read these lines with a knowing smile.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
In everybody’s deepest heart
Towering and strange
A something which no map can chart
And beyond every range
The mountain of longing
This must be love, this must be love
Immortally the same
Through every mile of earth it dove
Seeking nor friend nor fame
Out in the distant sea it grows
Re-calling you and me
Out in the distant fields it snows
On in infinity
This must be life, this must be life
This must be where we were
You are my heart, my joy, my wife
Here, there and everywhere…
The mountain of longing.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
Gold glitters, but if all that glitters were gold, the world would be a place of great glitter and much emptiness.
Dawn ever arrives. No matter how dark the night, it will melt away when dawn awakens the travelling sun, and there will be laughter when you hear the voices of children playing in the morning…
Songs are a thing that are born mysteriously, and every moment everywhere hath its own songs too and there is no end to songs and games – and this has often mystified me.
And loneliness is a guest that comes and goes as he pleases, and once you get used to him, he becomes easy to live with and, together, both of you achieve many things which on your own you could not achieve, even if the whole world were to aid you.
There are some masterpieces which only lonely artists can create. There are some wars which only an army of lonely soldiers can win. There is a certain love which only two lonely hearts can share with one another. And loneliness seeks itself in you – but when loneliness goes away from you again, do not follow.
I am not strong. But when I unite with golden dawn and lonely songs, they make me the canvas on which they paint their dreams, and I am strong again. And free.
Gold and dawn, songs, loneliness and strengths.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The tree you planted in my heart
Has grown strong…
The longer we remain apart
The more to each other we belong…
– 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.
Friends are true friends when they will not go away from you in search of something which they merely sense that you can give them; and they can wait a thousand years for you, because they simply love you.
Castles are places where those who have love can live without guilt, and those who have no love cannot live without guilt, because every castle is an amalgamation of the qualities of the souls that inhabit it. Castles breathe.
Lakes, although they treasure a mystery, will only show you your own face, and if you must know what lies inside the heart, then you must break through the face on the surface of the lake. Lakes speak never.
Mountains are mighty until you have conquered them… and then they become mightier than ever, each mount, but now you know why it stands there, because you have crowned it. Even after you die, the mountain will remember those who crowned him once, and forever; and when you return again, he will whisper your name not once, but thrice… mountains live forever in my heart. You are my heart, sweet woman.
Friends and castles, lakes, mountains and mysteries.
– 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 