Painted in 1568, oil on panel, 114 × 164 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Peasant Dance

See them dancing in the square
Over here.
Is it just the country air
Or the beer?
Watch the piper squeeze the skin,
Mouthpiece drooping on his chin,
Where the music must begin
To appear.

His companion sports a plume
In his hat.
Offers ale that we assume
Will be flat.
Close behind him village sots
Swigging from their earthen pots
Sing with tuneless roars the thoughts
Of the vat.

Ardent as his hat the lover
Busses his beloved maid.
In the background we discover
Town and people all displayed.

Hand in hand the farmers prance
Scrape and bow.
Harlequin salutes the dance,
Shows them how.
From the inn the bar wench drawn.
Children practice on the lawn.
Malt and music carry on,
Then as now.

Painted in 1565, oil on panel, 116.5 × 159.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Harvesters

Autumn has toasted the seeds in their pods,
Seared to crisp straw the ripe corn’s spiny stalk.
While the dew glistens on each day but God’s
We take our rakes and our scythes for a walk.
Scour off the scale from the scythe’s iron blade.
Mend alder rakes. Fill the jugs with small beer.
Pack up the loaves and sharp cheese that we’ve made,
Making the crop we’ll be baking next year.
The scythe is a moon. Its waxing and wane,
Cause and result of the stalks as they fall.
We rake and we shock to dry the green grain,
Reaping and raking is common to all.

Now it is noontime. Sprawled under a tree,
We eat and we drink as long as we can,
Taking delight in our own company.
Corn in the field is as tall as a man.
I lie on my back in the shade among friends.
Salty sweat drying on belly and brow.
Think of beginnings and then of their ends.
Heaven will never be closer than now.

Painted in 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 159 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Return of the Herd

Komm, bos. These svelte kine ease on up the path
Through scrub and skeleton trees. Overhead
The clouds warn of wind and rain and the wrath
Of a waning god. The cloven hooves tread
Dust of older times when hooves and hooked horns
Made them tribal totems. Now they are tamed,
The milk and meat of herdsmen. No one warns
Us that old gods may die or be renamed
But everyone needs something they can trust.
So these familiar paths become the way
That cattle and their drivers think they must
Follow. Just as everyone sees that day
Ends. Cows are milked and fed and watered. Men
Seek shelter. Gods are called and come again.

Painted in 1568, Oil on panel, 185 × 215 cm, Museé du Louvre, Paris

The Cripples

Aren’t we all cripples? Don’t we all lack limbs?
We suffered in war, came warped from the womb,
Or in the terrible time in the mill,
Made into monstrosities. There’s a room
In heaven where our extremities still
Tremble to join our truncations and trims.
That’s after we’re dead.
                                              Now we’re on the street,
Pegs and stumps and wooden flesh. Hey, master,
Throw us a copper or give us a crust.
We aren’t fit to earn our living. Faster
Or feaster, we need what everyone must
Have, what everyone needs, something to eat.

We monsters have our own kingdom, a realm
Rich in wretches, hungry, out of pocket,
Whose homes are under bridges by the cold
Banks of rivers. We are stump and socket,
Nothing to remember. We are the old
Calloused connections none can overwhelm.

We lack limbs. We cannot kneel nor yet stand
Up to the lords and ladies of this land.

Painted in 1568, tempura on canvas, 85.5 × 154 cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

The Parable of the Blind

The blind see no dangers, trusting in fate.
They move in procession, knowing they must.
Following steps of their leader and mate,
They mind a master they may not mistrust.
When the first falters and falls in a ditch,
The second will stumble, stunned and afraid.
Forswearing faith, he calls, “Son of a bitch!”
And jerks the staff that his follower prayed
Never would waver. The next one in line,
Face raised to high heaven, harkens to cries,
Knows crisis coming, but cannot divine
What lies ahead for a head with blind eyes.
The last two have time to cancel belief,
Stop in their tracks, unhand their friend’s shoulder.
But have they the strength to deal with the grief
That comes to us all when we grow older?
Faith is a phantom familiar to youth,
But even the blind may stumble on truth.

Painted in 1567, oil on panel, 108 × 156 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Conversion of Paul

The path was steep from the still sea.
You had to use a quirt. The horse
Needed the spur too. As you did,
Saul, to find a god fit to goad
You up the steepled stippled road
To find your fit. Heaven forbid
The clenching of your teeth, the course
Of bright blood down your beard-to-be,
Feet drumming on the endless earth,
The sightless sparks behind closed eyes,
The choke and chortle of surprise.
Paul, avatar of afterbirth,
Dedicated to illusion,
Intolerance, persecution.
Now you’d give everyone this quirt
To share your holiness and hurt.

Painted in 1601, oil on panel, 39 × 57 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Winter Landscape

This solid water makes a surface slick
Enough to lose your balance. Still it’s fun
To sail a sadiron on the ice, to run
A little bit and slide and use a stick,
A prop to stay upon your feet. A top
Spins, stutters, near the careful skate to skate,
Foot by foot, the skater glides till a late
Freezeline brings him asprawling to a stop.
With all this brisk activity it’s no
Use to set a line, lure a fish. They’re all
Safe under the ice gaping at the fall
Of the skater now seated on the boat. Snow
Hides food and fodder from the birds. But staked
Aslant, three broad boards shelter scattered seed
And chaff that happy hungry birds can feed
Upon. And they don’t see the cord that’s snaked
Up to the window. But we shouldn’t scold.
Everybody’s hungry when it’s cold.

Painted in 1565, oil on panel, 117 × 162 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Hunters in the Snow

What you can guess, ravens already know.
Stonecold feet, hungry dogs, empty game bags,
Snow speckles the dark trees, a gray sky sags
Over the trudge of footsteps in the snow.
On the frozen water skaters shiver.
Curling weights slink and slither on the ice.
A lone fishing hole yields nothing nice,
Nothing to eat from forest or from river.
Well, there’s still barley for our crust of bread.
Salted salmon all the way from Thule.
Mealtime reminds everyone that truly
Winter’s come to stay. What more can be said.
Those hungry hounds whine for a friendly fire.
Hooded hunters must melt a frosty fringe
From grizzled beards, crowd close enough to singe
Chapped cheeks. Game is God’s good gift. The higher
The kite flies, the less she will remember
Summer. We must all accept December.

Painted in 1567, oil on panel, 102 × 158 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Massacre of the Innocents

When King Herod, hardening his heart, killed
The children it was prophecy fulfilled.
His soldiers filled the square, spiky lances
Echoing bare branches. One horse prances
To the fore. His mailed rider bangs the butt
Of spear against the shutters, doors, all shut
For winter. Every male child was torn
Away for murder when God’s son was born.

We celebrate the massacre. But who
Is innocent? If holy books are true
None are guiltless. We all ate the first fruit
Of paradise. All of us, branch and root,
Are Adam’s sons and daughters. We all share
The sins of introspection and despair.

It’s only fitting that God should appear
In armor bearing pain and grief and fear.
The death of children let the world begin.
Innocence died when we invented sin.

Painted in 1560, oil on canvas, 73.5 × 112 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium

The Fall of Icarus

A good father gives children to the world,
Children of flesh and blood or plume and feather.
Alone, a gift unwinding in the weather
Until their inner meanings are unfurled.
He casts these constructs off a tower of stone
And follows their fair flight with eager eye
That cannot help see farther than the sky,
But blinds itself to danger and unknown.
When flight is interrupted by the sun,
When night’s dark dreams are opened to the glare
Of that great eye, what can he do but stare
At an immense catastrophe. He’s done.

Icarus falls. The bark bobs out to sea.
The ploughman clucks, the coulter draws its line.
The shepherd tends his charges. The sign
Of cataclysm’s over you and me
Living our lives beneath a falling star
Earnestly becoming what we are.

Painted in 1559, oil on panel, 118 × 164 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Farewell to flesh. The holy spirits reign.
Beggars bare their bowls. Cripples their lopped limbs,
Ruined and ragged. None here can remain
Immune to charms and Christian chants and hymns.
They ward off evil and erase its stain.

But here too excess blossoms. Virtue dims.
Gluttony glares. Lust lays its languid chain.
Sloth slumbers and the cup of drunkard brims.

The painter lets the two of them complain
And contest. But we must ask he who limns
This weary war to use his brush, his brain.
The fire shouldn’t consume the lamp it trims.

Faith and its fathers left us this domain
Filled with doubts and dooms, certainties and whims.
His canvas shows us what we lose we gain.
A sea of paint wherein the painter swims
And finds a way to let his brush explain
How carnival can coexist with pain.

Painted in 1568, oil on panel, 59.3 × 68.3 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Nestrobber

Dirk and I waken when cockerels crow,
Go to the cornfields to plow and to sow,
Hoe down weed seedlings, rake off the stone,
And then God willing, we reap what we’ve grown.
When the rain keeps us from field and from fold,
We mend what is broken, replace what is old,
Sit by a fireside, cook up a stew,
Sleep in the haycocks and wait for the dew.
Then when the goodwife is still fast abed,
We find a footpath ahead of our tread.
There in the wood in the greenswelling spring,
Dirk spies a nest and a flicker of wing.
He climbs his oak, I step into my stream,
Both of us deep in another man’s dream.

Painted in 1562, oil on panel, 117.4 × 162 cm, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp

Mad Meg

Mad Meg, with her fireman's black helm, her bag
Crammed with pan and pot under an armor shell,
Strides ungainly through shatter and shock, hag
And her plunder straight from the mouth of Hell.
The bashful demons of our deepest dreams
Hail her or on their own, wander bemused,
Lost in their world of weird. Somehow it seems
No creatures were more carefully abused.
Somehow this scene of horror doesn't fright.
So surreal and stricken is this city
That viewers' eyes don't flutter into flight
But gaze in glazed Socratic pity.
Even Hell gapes only for the dentist drill,
All unconcerned with anything but when.
No fiery flame disturbs him but he will
Undoubted welcome back Mad Meg again.

So will we all be welcomed down below
When demons and dementia make it so.

Painted in 1563, oil on panel, 114 × 155 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Tower of Babel

See, lord, observe how high it is, how broad.
Watch, if you will, the cranes. See how the stones
Enormous as they are, jerk and jostle,
Creep and crackle into place. Oh, my lord,
We build apace. Soon this stone tower will breach
The heavens. We shall see what we shall see.
I have wooden wedges in the quarry.
I have tall trees falling. I have galleys
Full of slaves. I have garlic, millet, leeks.
This holy hill will rise to where God speaks.
We, my lord, together, fashion valleys
Into mountains, story upon story.
We will find the secret that will set us free.
Do not stop now, lord, not before we reach
What we know we will. Give me now your word
We will continue. So that the fossil
Hunters of the future find not just bones
But proof that we were not afraid of God.

Painted in 1560, oil on panel, 118 × 161cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Children’s Games

Strike the hoop. It spins, a repetition,
Circle after circle and the frog leaps
Over and over its own volition,
Revolutions realized. He who keeps
The top awhirl, a seat on hobby horse
Whips and reins entire worlds. Piggy back rides
Are stages in the journey, the long course
Of life adventuring with friends and guides.
Stilts raise us to precarious heights, then
We tumble clumsy downwards. The knuckle
Bones explain to everyone that all men
Frolic till their very sinews buckle,
Contort and balance, bend the body’s own
Integrity until we see the end
Of consonant demeanor and the bone
Understands even straight must sometimes bend.

There are no ends to games that children play.
Eternities enclosed in everyday.