Langsam rückt näher
Der schwere Abschied
Die Distanz kurz und leer
Zwischen mir und dem Meer
Tote Stille. Dunkler Fried.
Doch Trennung muß sein
Immer und immer wieder
Tauchen wir blind hinein
In den schattigen blauen Hain
Hinterlassen dort unsere Lieder.
Und wenn eine Lotusblüte
Sanft vorbei schwebt
Erweckt diese Wundertüte
Die Reinheit und die Güte
Die an unserer Erinnerung klebt.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
2019: Jahr der deutschen Dichtung
Land der Gegensätze
Der Seelenschätze
Besetzst tausend Plätze
In meinen Seelenhüllen
Spinnst Deine Netze
In meinen Gefühlen
Sicher habe ich Dich mal
Gekannt, geliebt, verlassen
Es war (mehr als) einmal
Mein Fuß auf Deinen Straßen
Gelernt und erlebt Lieben und Hassen
In Deinen Dörfern und Gassen
Und die Stufen des Betens
Des Himmelsleiter Betretens
Des Gnadenarten Erbetens
Habe ich hier ertastet
Die Erkenntnis des Gottanbetens
Die noch auf mir lastet.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
2019: Jahr der deutschen Dichtung
That, for which you need the knowledge you got out of the lesson, is already gone and done, has already happened.
There are some things that need to happen in order for certain lessons to be learned and pieces of knowledge acquired. It would have been better if the recognition had been won, or already rested in one’s possession, before the onset of the event; because actually the knowledge was needed to be able to handle the event properly. Instead, the event has become the bringer and the teacher of the knowledge which can no longer be used to prevent, manage or correct that same event.
What sad, poignant, irony! Now you have the knowledge, but it is useless for the purpose for which it was meant to be used in your life. You grow old just to learn the value of youth. You become a foreigner just to learn the value of being a native. You die just learn the value of life. You ignore advice only to understand its value when it is too late to use it anymore. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
So when are you going to make use of this new knowledge now? You will get your chance when you come again in another life. But will you remember, somewhere deep down in your soul, what you are painfully learning today? Do you remember, deep down in your soul, what you once painfully learned in another life? Go deep inside. Read it again. Read it again. Your soul is a book. And you the spirit are its author.
Always wake up before the fight – not after!
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
The simplicity of reality
Drag me down to earth
Some mistakes can be corrected
Only through death and rebirth
But it takes even more strength
To live with your unrectified error
And if you can no longer change your path
Then go it with virtue and valour
The outer Change is not as important
As the inner Transformation
If individuals stay inwardly corrupt
No laws can save a Nation
And when you lose your fear
Of mockery and condescension
You’ll see that most People are simply Followers
For fear of ostracization.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
I’m quiet tonight
Never mind that it’s morning
I’m still dreaming
I remember a friend
We had high hopes for his future
Yet he chose the Easy
Now I’m all alone
On the road we once chose together
Watching it grow longer
This pain I keep inside
Greater than death, worse than loss
Treachery’s dungeons.
If I doubted reincarnation
This life has taught me a bitter lesson
For I must come again
The work is unfinished
The cards will be reshuffled
I will come again.
Then I hear, so soft
The sounds of morning dawning
The past is over now.
Those words, those strange words
That baffle the minds of politics
Of culture and science
You can call me Fool
You can call me mad, and yet
You too will come again.
– che chidi chukwumerije.
Human characters incarnate
And re-incarnate.
Each stay on another Earth is but
A continuation.
It is limited by time and
Saturated by responsibility.
There is a task…
– this is the objective happening,
always to be borne in mind.
The key to fulfilment is Love,
Always to be borne in Heart.
You running and you running and you running away,
Sang Mr. Bob Marley
But you can’t run away from yourself.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije..
What yesterday I pushed away
Returns today, stronger
With even more hunger
Songs that I must play.
I have to move
Fly like a dove
Driven by love
I have to remove
Myself from illusion
Confusion.
Unfinished Verses stare at me
Repeated Verses endlessly.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
His demons
Come straight from hell
Chase him everyday
He remembers the cries of the women
Children and all the others
Victims of his guns of war
The land is silent now
His conscience is loud
The demons won’t go away
They want to take him with them
Back to hell where he belongs.
The last thing he did
Before he disappeared into the depths of hell
Was to pray
Oh yeah he sent up a prayer
Of apology – no plea for mercy – just apology
For all the victims of his merciless guns
Before he with a bold heart faces his demons
And yes the demons
Dragged him down with them
To the bowels of hell
Where his evil had created them
And that was the last that was seen of him
And that was the last that was seen of him
Thousand of years have passed…
But now when I look I see
An angel hovering over the pits of hell
Looking for him, calling him, waiting for him…
Will he rise out again? You’ve done your time.
Rise up, rise up, repentant spirit
From out the pits of hell
Where you no longer belong
Come back to Earth and do it differently this time –
Birth. Rebirth.
A new child is born
An old soul has come back again
Do it better this time
Save lives, brother
Save lives, brother
Love they neighbour, man
A little child
I see it in your eyes
You’ve got a heart of gold
Knowing and old
Full of the mission to do something good
A little child
I see it in your eyes
Exorcism of the demons of old
Save lives, sister
Save lives, sister
Love they neighbour, woman.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.
On the way to Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
On the way from Falkenstein
I knew you were mine
But when we stood side by side
Upon that castled immortality
I knew only that the great divide
Yawns yet ‘twixt longing and reality
And if we true will call this meeting our last
Then, woman, never lie away our past.
– 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)
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 