Ducal, Charles

Belgium, (b. 1952)

OF TENDER FLESH 1 – LIVESTOCK

  1. 1
  2. So it started:
  3.  
  4. from the flaccid belly of the field
  5. there rose a wall,
  6. created (in our sleep) a hasty caesura
  7. in the endless mud and rain.
  8.  
  9. We, of tender flesh,
  10. came groping in the dark,
  11. tore our mouths
  12. on the new myth,
  13.  
  14. concerning us,
  15. conclusive, neutral,
  16. too smart to just sink back
  17. in the layer of fat, the warm ground
  18.  
  19. in which we rooted as children.
  20. Someone lifted us up
  21. and punched into our ear
  22. the number meant for us.
  23.  
  24. So it started: once in the sty
  25. we learnt to forget ourselves,
  26. not to move, sleep or eat,
  27. be meat until the final
  28.  
  29. gram.
  30.  
  31. 2
  32. In the beginning there was mud.
  33.  
  34. At night a sow sometimes walked
  35. across the scene, panting and waddling,
  36. as if coloured by our lust.
  37.  
  38. Bread and water, days standing still
  39. as posts for a fate tied to this place.
  40. Man and animal sleeping together,
  41. inseparable, saturated with moisture.
  42.  
  43. And nowhere a word
  44. to touch themselves.
  45.  
  46. Until God appeared
  47. with plummet and planks
  48. and had us build a sty midfield
  49.  
  50. and taught us to ape his image,
  51. touch the flesh with the word,
  52. turn lust into money.

OF TENDER FLESH 2 – FEEDING TIME

  1. Between sleeping and waking
  2. in concrete made flesh
  3. an early ear hears light approach
  4. an early throat groans
  5.  
  6. uprise of startled rumps
  7. to unbearable screeches
  8. bound in tug belts
  9. flaky foam and seething slaver
  10.  
  11. master hunger passes by
  12. and dumps in the troughs
  13. his meal cart reduces the cry
  14. to an underground singing slobber
  15.  
  16. as if something human leaves the sty.

OF TENDER FLESH 3 – THE PIG

  1. The pig lives on the other side
  2. of love, low
  3. to the ground of our loneliness.
  4.  
  5. It lays itself down lets itself be bitten
  6. as the flesh that laughs
  7. in our most secret of dreams.
  8.  
  9. It roots in muck and at a trot
  10. the language that we
  11. write with our hands washed.
  12.  
  13. If one of us were to lose his head,
  14. we’d cry, the both of us,
  15. as though possessed.

OF TENDER FLESH 4 – SET SAIL

  1. A door creeks, a light buzzes on.
  2. Caught out a rat flees
  3. into the ceiling.
  4.  
  5. Awakened from the flesh
  6. the noise of hunger rises.
  7.  
  8. Incredibly heavy the dust hangs
  9. in the webs, incredibly
  10. heavy the stench.
  11.  
  12. Were you here before?
  13.  
  14. Beneath the load rising
  15. slow and greasy
  16. the toxic stream.
  17.  
  18. Do you know the rules onboard?
  19.  
  20. An engine starts.
  21. In the pipes the shaking begins,
  22. the meal falls.
  23.  
  24. Calmly the ferryman marks
  25. the backs,
  26. checks his number.

OF TENDER FLESH 5 – FARM

  1. As long as the ink is wet
  2. the farm stays in speech.
  3.  
  4. A crow searches the dunghill
  5. as a finger browsing a dictionary.
  6.  
  7. In the backyard notions lay
  8. rusting as fatigued steel.
  9.  
  10. The door in which a sty begins
  11. gives off a smell of old poetry.
  12.  
  13. In ink splatters the flies swarm
  14. out across the creaking barrow.
  15.  
  16. The hand that is about to dig
  17. roots meaninglessly through the feed.
  18.  
  19. The waiting eyes look moist,
  20. moved by hunger.

All poems: © Charles Ducal. In inkt gewassen [Washed in ink]. Translation by Willem Groenewegen. Amsterdam: Atlas (2006).

About the Poet:

Charles Ducal, Belgium [author], (b. 1952) is a poet, educator and pig farmer. Charles Ducal is the pseudonym of Frans Dumortier. He studied Germanic Philology and taught at a secondary school in Leuven, the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in Belgium. In Ducal’s universe as a poet, pigs, God, mothers and the poet himself are all equals, without discrimination.

Ducal is acclaimed for his mythological magnification of subjects such as love, marriage, family relationships, his farming and his active and critical position on socially relevant subjects. He was appointed the first Flemish Dichter des Vaderlands, or Poet Laureate, of Belgium in 2004.

Willem Groenewegen [translator], (b. 1971) studied English literature in Groningen and Manchester. He has been a professional poetry translator since 2001. In 2007 he was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for Rutger Kopland’s What Water Left Behind. He recently translated some 70 poems into Dutch for the Flanders Fields museum anthology The Written War. Willem Groenewegen also translates short stories and essays for art books. [DES-09/19]