The Dance in  General   

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

By William Carlos Williams

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Other poems by William Carlos Williams:

• A Celebration
• A Goodnight
• A Sort Of A Song
• Approach Of Winter
• April Is The Saddest Month
• Aux Imagistes
• Berket And The Stars
• Blizzard
• Complaint
• Complete Destruction
• Danse Russe
• Dedication For A Plot Of Ground
• from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
• Heel & Toe To The End
• Item
• Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus
• Light Hearted Author
• Light Hearted William
• Love Song
• Muier
• Nantucket
• Overture To A Dance Of Locomotives
• Pastoral
• Poem (As the cat)
• Portrait Of A Lady
• Romance Moderne
• Spring And All
• Suzanne
• Sympathetic Portrait Of A Child
• The Cold Night
• The Crowd At The Ball Game
• The Dance
• The Defective Record
• The Desolate Field
• The Disputants
• The Great Figure
• The Hunters in the Snow
• The Ivy Crown
• The Last Words Of My English Grandmother
• The Late Singer
• The Poem
• The Red Wheelbarrow
• The Soughing Wind
• The Term
• The Thing
• The Uses Of Poetry
• The Young Housewife
• This Is Just To Say
• To A Friend
• To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies
• To A Poor Old Woman
• To Elsie
• To Waken An Old Lady
• Tract
• Willow Poem
• Winter Trees
• Youth And Beauty