Ode to the Onion
Ode to the Onion - form Summary
An Ode to the Humble
This poem is an ode that elevates a common onion into a luminous, almost cosmic object. The speaker traces its growth from dark earth to a “clear” globe, celebrating humble origins and natural beauty. The onion’s paradoxical power—making people cry yet causing no harm—becomes a sign of worthiness. The poem links everyday sustenance with classical and natural imagery, placing poverty’s table and cosmic praise side by side.
Read Complete AnalysesOnion, 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.
this is so sigmabarogo hi Alex