Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I) (by Erin Moure)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

Little Theatres, or, Aturuxos Calados: Poems (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2006 Canadian Shortlist).

1In the onion, there’s

2something of fire. That fire known as

3Fog. The onion is the way

4fog has of entering the earth.

5Into the soil. Through the green leaves of the onion.

6Look how its leaves extend up into the air.

7Look how, once cut,

8an onion’s leaf has air inside it.

9Air is the generosity of fog.

10With fog, there is generosity on earth.

11These two thoughts are identical.

12They are two thoughts that sustain the earth.

13In these bellicose days that promise wars,

14look how the onion helps fog

15to sustain the earth.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011