by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565, oil on panel, 117×162 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
This very famous painting is the subject of this ekphrastic poem, written in 1962, by William Carlos Williams:
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
inn yard is
deserted but for a huge bonfire
that flares wind-driven tended by
women who cluster
about it to the right beyond
the hill is a pattern of skaters
Brueghel the painter
concerned with it all has chosen
a winter-struck bush for his
foreground to
complete the picture
It seems strange to me that the poem misses what I think is the most important feature of the painting: that the hunters are returning empty-handed. It’s that that makes the image so bleak.
In the Dark 