Children’s Games

(Children’s Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1529?-1569,
Dutch landscape painter; click on the image to see an
enlarged version)

Last October, we looked at ekphrasis, or literary commentary about a work of art. The poem today is one of the ten that William Carlos Williams wrote about Bruegel the Elder’s paintings. You can read more of these poems by clicking on his name in the “labels” below.

(To read poems by other poets on this theme of ekphrasis, click on the month of October in the archives in the column to the right.)

CHILDREN’S GAMES

I

This is a schoolyard
crowded
with children

of all ages near a village
on a small stream
meandering by

where some boys
are swimming
bare-ass

or climbing a tree in leaf
everything
is motion

elder women are looking
after the small
fry

a play wedding a
christening
nearby one leans

hollering
into
an empty hogshead

II

Little girls
whirling their skirts about
until they stand out flat

tops pinwheels
to run in the wind with
or a toy in 3 tiers to spin

with a piece
of twine to make it go
blindman's-buff follow the

leader stilts
high and low tipcat jacks
bowls hanging by the knees

standing on your head
run the gauntlet
a dozen on their backs

feet together kicking
through which a boy must pass
roll the hoop or a

construction
made of bricks
some mason has abandoned


III

The desperate toys
of children
their

imagination equilibrium
and rocks
which are to be

found
everywhere
and games to drag

the other down
blindfold
to make use of

a swinging
weight
with which

at random
to bash in the
heads about

them
Brueghel saw it all
and with his grim

humor faithfully
recorded
it

~ William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), American poet and practicing physician