Onion (March)

The onion we march out as a metaphor of the layers of an issue. Once we take away the papery exterior in which the matter is presented, we find harder outer layers of view make way for flexible inner layers of meaning, and so on until the core of the subject has been reached. Reached is not the word, for the subject is all of the layers of the onion, in fact. Statesmen, philosophers and poets are in unison about the onion. Anyone who would crassly and unthinkingly bite through the onion, skin and all, has no sense of smell.