Pen & Chisel
When in my head a thought or an idea pops
The world around me surely now or later stops
Then perhaps my pen will find my waiting hand
And on paper blank a drop of ink may land
Or perhaps a chisel grabs and holds me tight
Waiting for a wooden mallet to strike it right
Pen or chisel — no matter the tool
It’s the journey towards expression that is cool
Pen or chisel — no matter what I hold
It’s all about the sculpted story being told
X/2024
Pen & Chisel
Pen & Chisel
is aboutMy Poems & My Sculptures
My work and life as a medical doctor have been a source of inspiration to write poems and to make sculptures. So have the places where I have lived and worked and the people I have met.
I was born in Belgium. At University, I met my future wife Kristien.
From 1992 till 1998, we both worked in Taung Community Hospital, a rural hospital in Bophuthatswana, a former homeland of South Africa.
In 2000, we moved to Alice Springs (Mparntwe), an outback town in the very heart of Australia. We have been working in a practice for Aboriginal patients ever since.
My native language is Flemish, but on my website you will find poems in different languages, because of who I am, where I come from and because of the places my life journey has taken me to.
Koen De Decker - X/2024
This website was launched on 13/10/2024 - still under construction …
Poem & Sculpture
Poem
A
Poem
Never is
Yet gently wakes
Up in the reader’s
Mind and then subtly grows
Word after word after word
To become Beauty and Melody
Verse after verse after verse
To become Meaning and Truth
Bearing fruit and birthing hope
That with the last verse
The very last word
It briefly
May
B
XI/2020
Sculpture
A Sculpture is. It simply is.
Suddenly in your eyes.
Total Impact.
Real. Realised. Materialised.
Out of any Material.
Complete Construct.
Touch. Finished.
Polished or not.
Taking up all space
And giving space
To the eye and the soul to
Deconstruct. Unpack.
Walk
Around
And
Explore
To travel back
With the sculptor
To when
And how
And why
It was
To become to
Be
Pen & Chisel
Florid
I don’t know
who planted this seed out of my mind
popping hubris — this not me a man of kind
of crazy to think that ever I could create
for real or even in my dreams just imitate
one of the wonders of the world divine
so intricate so delicate a design
so beautiful so fragile and fleeting
so colourful so joyful and greeting
I know
look what I ’ve done — here it lies as it stands
fall no spring — sprouting from my clumsy hands
a sculpted screw-up of bland grey metal
that’s how I let down and raised each petal
with florid verve I planned of life to sing
but ended up in plain paint dying my thing
inanimate, pathetic and in vain
needing no sunshine, no care, no love, no rain
I/2022
Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers — and never succeeding.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
