The Wedding Dance in the Open Air

Disciplined by the artist
to go round
& round 

in holiday gear
a riotously gay rabble of
peasants and their 

ample-bottomed doxies
fills
the market square 

featured by the women in
their starched
white headgear 

they prance or go openly
toward the wood's
edges 

round and around in
rough shoes and
farm breeches 

mouths agape
Oya !
kicking up their heels  


William Carlos Williams 


Pieter Brueghel, The Wedding Dance in the Open Air (1566)

Oil on canvas, 47 inches x 62 inches. Detroit Institute of Art.