Ode to the Onion

Onion,
shining flask,
your beauty assembled
petal by petal,
they affixed crystal scales to you
and your belly of dew grew round
in the secret depth of the dark earth.
The miracle took place
underground,
and when your lazy green stalk
appeared
and your leaves were born
like swords in the garden,
the earth gathered its strength
exhibiting your naked transparency,
and just as the distant sea
copied the magnolia in Aphrodite
raising up her breasts,
so the earth
made you,
onion,
as bright as a planet
and fated
to shine,
constant constellation,
rounded rose of water,
on
poor people's
dining tables.

Generously
you give up
your balloon of freshness
to the boiling consummation
of the pot,
and in the blazing heat of the oil
the shred of crystal
is transformed into a curled feather of gold.

I shall also proclaim how your influence
livens the salad's love,
and the sky seems to contribute
giving you the fine shape of hail
praising your chopped brightness
upon the halves of the tomato.
but within the people's
reach,
showered with oil,
dusted
with a pinch of salt
you satisfy the worker's hunger
along the hard road home.
Poor people's star,
fairy godmother
wrapped
in fancy paper,
you rise from the soil,
eternal, intact, as pure
as a celestial seed,
and when the kitchen knife
cuts you
the only painless tear
is shed:
you made us weep without suffering.
I have praised every living thing, onion,
but for me you are
more beautiful than a bird
of blinding plumage;
to my eyes you are
a heavenly balloon, platinum cup,
the snowy anemone's
motionless dance.

The fragrance of the earth is alive
in your crystalline nature.

Pablo Neruda
Odes to Common Things