“Haymaking”

by

William Carlos Williams

The living quality of
the man’s mind
stands out

and its covert assertions
for art, art, art!
painting

that the Renaissance
tried to absorb
but

it remained a wheat field
over which the
wind played

men with scythes tumbling
the wheat in
rows

the gleaners already busy
it was his own—
magpies

the patient horses no one
could take that
from him

Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams was first published by New Directions in 1962. The book consists of a collection of 105 poems written from 1949-1962. The beginning of the book consists of a collection of 10 poems based on paintings by the Flemish painter, Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The collection of poetry  reflects William Carlos Williams’s own late-life poetry  as it was the final poetry collection published during his lifetime. In 1963, Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry although William Carlos Williams received the award posthumously for he had died two months prior to winning .