Wisława Szymborska's The Onion

 

The Onion

The onion, now that's something else.

Its innards don't exist.

Nothing but pure onionhood

fills this devout onionist.

Oniony on the inside,

onionesque it appears.

It follows its own daimonion

without our human tears.

Our skin is just a cover-up

for the land where none dare go,

an internal inferno,

the anathema of anatomy.

In an onion there's only onion

from its top to its toe,

onionymous monomania,

unanimous omninudity.

At peace, of a piece,

internally at rest.

Inside it, there's a smaller one

of undiminished worth.

The second holds a third one,

the third contains a fourth.

A centripetal fugue.

Polyphony compressed.

Nature's rotundest tummy,

its greatest success story,

the onion drapes itself in its

own aureoles of glory.

We hold veins, nerves, and fat,

secretions' secret sections.

Not for us such idiotic

onionoid perfections.

-Wisława Szymborska (tr. Claire Cavanaugh and Stanley Barańczak)

That poem just makes me giggle. 'Nature's rotundest tummy', 'daimonion'. Often the smaller one inside is not just of 'undiminished worth', it's even better. The outer layers are generally damaged or dry.

Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) was a Polish Nobel Prize winner, best known as a poet. I've scheduled this post in advance, but I'm off-grid as this appears; I picked this, not just because it's fun, but also because I'm likely reading a rather large volume by another female Nobel Prize winner from Poland...