Everyanimal Poem by Erik Menkveld

By the ditch's side I am sprouting udders,
in the air feathers stick into my skin.

In the mud behind some farms
a rooting disc is growing on my snout.

Over the dung heap or below the duckweed:
if need be I'll shift in swarms or schools.

Cloaked in the grey-brown fly-skin
stretched between my limbs

I hang in barns or desolated quarries
upside down in dormant state.

As a herd I wrap my hands and feet
with horn and effortlessly switch

between a gait on palm, or toe, or hoof.
I stretch out cautious lips on the savannah

for leaves high up between the thorns. And
there blood also runs across my stripes

or I yawn listlessly from eternal lionicity.
Legs and hide I often leave behind

in sea, or swamp or desert sands. There I must be
either soft bodied, gaudy or poisonous.

And then there are the countless possibilities
that I no longer get to show:

spike on the forehead, scorching breath,
a horse's body with human breast.

This has always bothered me: each animal
one sees is but a fraction of myself.

Look: in this primeval forest I burl and rub
across a trunk with shovel antlers

while my proboscis, dorsal fin, my spines
remain invisible in this biotope.

For once, I wish I could appear in fullest
glory, although surroundings never fit.

Translation: 2005, Willem Groenewegen