"Ode to an Onion" by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.


I really don’t remember how I came upon this poem. I was looking online for one with an interesting title and this one caught my attention. With a title “Ode to an onion,” you would think that the poem is supposed to be funny. I found out however, that it’s actually very serious. A Spanish poet, Pablo Nerudas takes something as simple as an onion and writes about how it is so wonderful. The more I read this poem, the more it appealed to me. Nerudas could have written about anything spectacular, but he chose to write about an onion...

First, instead of saying that an onion just "grows," Nerudas writes about it as some sort of a marvel. He writes, "Under the earth/ the miracle/ happened (8-10), when describing how an onion sprouts from the ground. His phrases like "and in the secrecy of the dark earth/ your belly grew round with dew" (6-7), make it seem like he's really telling a story. The onion is not perfect, as the poet calls it clumsy (11), but he goes on to explain in great detail, the elements of the onion's beauty. But my favorite lines of the poem are the last ten. Nerudas says, "but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers..." (34-36). And the grand finale, "and the fragrance of the earth lives/ in your crystalline nature" (40-41). I've never thought of an onion as the "fragrance of the earth." Maybe this guy is saying that even simple, strong smelling things that come out of dirt can still be wonderful...pretty deep.