The Wedding Dance in the Open Air

William Carlos Williams

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

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