Pablo Neruda's "Ode to an Onion" on the centenary of his birth

Here's Pablo Neruda's "Ode To The Onion." Neruda, Chilean writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was born a century ago this month.

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.

What are your favorite food poems?

Comments

[buy silagra online]

In all the good Greek of Plato
I lack my roast beef and potato.

[breastfeeding mastitis]

The onion stimulates the appetite and regulates the functions of the stomach, is a diuretic, so it is an important way, as purifying the body.

[Marlon]

I have a favorite one, which might not be read by all - Food is… by Melony Swasey.

[bibliochef]

Swell poem. And it mademe think as I have recently had an entry on my own blog re poetry and food -- and on a silly murder mystery that's title had to do with a roasted onion.

Synchronicity.

Bibliochef!

[Laura Cowan]

Another food-related poem: "To A Poor Old Woman" by the American poet William Carlos Williams:

To A Poor Old Woman

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

[Laura Cowan]

My favourite food poem is: Survey of Literature, by the American poet John Crowe Ransom.

Survey of Literature

In all the good Greek of Plato
I lack my roast beef and potato.

A better man was Aristotle,
Pulling steady on the botle.

I dip my hat to Chaucer,
Swilling soup from his saucer,

And to Master Shakespeare
Who wrote big on small beer.

The abstemious Wordsworth
Subsisted on a curd's - worth,

But a slick one was Tennyson,
Putting gravy on his venison/

What these men had to eat and drink
Is what we say and what we think.

The influence of Milton
Came wry out of Stilton.

Sing a song for Percy Shelley,
Drowned in pale lemon jelly,

And for precious John Keats,
Dripping blood of pickled beets.

Then there was poor Willie Blake,
He foundered on sweet cake.

God have mercy on the sinner
Who mus write with no dinner,

No gravy and no grub,
No pweter and no pub,

No belly and no bowels,
Only consonants and vowels.

[Lori Chesnutt]

Just loved the onion poem so much said, with such delicacy must definitly be admired.Hows this old poem for those who remember it.Pardon me for being so rude,it was not me it was my food,it got so lonely down below,it just popped up to say hello.