Mª Jesús Pellús

“The Onion is Frost”

2014

C/Algarrobo

A wonderful mural by María Jesús Pellús that illustrates Miguel Hernández’s Lullaby of the Onion poem. On a background with three intensely coloured rectangles (red, green and yellow), the artist has drawn an onion with light strokes. Cradled within its layers, a child placidly sleeps, in a reference to the poet’s son.

In hunger’s cradle
my little son lay.
With onion-blood
he was nurtured.
But your blood’s
frosted with sugar,
onions and hunger.

A dark-haired woman,
dissolved in moonlight,
spills herself ray by ray
over the cradle.
Laugh, little one,
drink moonlight
if you must.