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Onions by William Matthews

Onions

by William Matthews

(published in his Selected Poems and Translations, 1969-1991, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992)


How easily happiness begins by   

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter   

slithers and swirls across the floor   

of the sauté pan, especially if its   

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.


This could mean soup or risotto   

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions   

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,   

though if they were eyes you could see


clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   

from the taut ball first the brittle,   

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least


recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,   

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on   

weeping as you go on in, through   

the moist middle skins, the sweetest


and thickest, and you can go on   

in to the core, to the bud-like,   

acrid, fibrous skins densely   

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most   

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare


and rage and murmury animal   

comfort that infant humans secrete.   

This is the best domestic perfume.   

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed   

hands and lift to your mouth a hint


of a story about loam and usual   

endurance. It’s there when you clean up   

and rinse the wine glasses and make   

a joke, and you leave the minutest   

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.


I need to first admit that I am not a great fan of onions (unless they are pulverized and undetectable) and chopping them makes me cry, a stinging that is painful.


But I do love this poem!


That first line tells us that, like many food poems, this one will have ode-like qualities. Then lots of "s" words, which add to the sizzle and scent Matthews is creating.


But that third stanza! Sure, stanza 2 gave us "nacreous" (when was the last time you read that word in a poem? or anywhere?), but stanza 3 provides "cataracts," along with verbs and images that put us there in that kitchen.


The great description continues in the next stanza. Stanza 4 brings us a "murmury animal" in this incredible sensory detail:  "like the nuggets of nightmare/and rage and murmury animal/  

comfort that infant humans secrete."


(Every so often I read a title, a line, a stanza, a poem, etc. that I wish I had in me to write. The above quotation is one of those. I am not a tattoo person, but maybe on a tee shirt?)


And right after that comes a volta ("turn" in poetry, usually in sonnets, but good to use when speaking of poetry). "Domestic perfume." Ah, we are in a house. We have washed our hands and then we eat. And in that last stanza ("domestic" has hinted, but now we are sure) there is a couple--partners? Parent and child? Friends? It doesn't really matter, though I guess spouses because of "domestic."


A joke, cleaning up, wine glasses, and then a small essence of the onion/the dinner (an act of love) is left behind, to linger.


Great poems take the ordinary and make it fascinating or take the strange and make it relatable. This poem turns dinner into a deeply meaningful event. Nothing extraordinary has happened in the poem; it is the way the poet sees, experiences, and then describes the meal.


A murmury animal, indeed!


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