Oda A La Cebolla (Ode to the Onion) by Pablo Neruda Onion, crystalline sack, your beauty formed, petal after petal, of luminous scales (5) that increased you and your belly grew with dew in the mystery of the dark earth. Underground (10) this mystery occurred and when your cumbersome green stem burst forth, and your leaves were born (15) like sabers in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked (20) transparency, and as the withdrawn sea lifting Aphrodites breasts duplicated the magnolia, so did the earth (25) fashion you, onion clear as a planet, and destined to bedazzle, (30) constant constellation, round rose of water, upon the tabletops of the poor. (35) Generously, you undo your globe of freshness in devout consummation of the cooking pot, (40) and the crystal shred in the flaming heat of the oil is transformed into a curled feather of gold. (45) Again, I will recall how fertile is your influence on the love of the salad, and it seems that the sky must aid (50) by giving you hails clever form to celebrate your chopped brightness on the borderlands (55) of the tomato. But within reach of our communal hands sprinkled with oil, dusted (60) with a nip sea salt, you kill the hunger of field-laborers on the hard road. Star of the oppressed, (65) pixie godmother wrapped in delicate paper, you rise from the ground (70) infinite, intact, perfect as any astral seed, and on chopping you up the kitchen knife will raise one single tear (75) without agony. You force us to cry but never hurt us. I have praised all the world that exists, (80) but to me, you onion, you are more handsome than any bird of dazzling feathers, (85) a heavenly orb, a platinum bowl, an unmoving dance of the snowy windflower and the aroma of (90) wet earth burns in your luminous being.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 00:12:29 +0000
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