POETS Main Page INDEX of Poets INDEX of Titles & First Lines WILLIAMS Menu

Williams

 

William Carlos Williams
1883-1963

"The Dance"

 

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.

Buy William Carlos Williams' poetry

POETS Main Page INDEX of Poets INDEX of Titles & First Lines WILLIAMS Menu