An Onion Is Round and Grows in the Ground

The poetry collection An Onion Is Round and Grows in the Ground offers poems on a wide spectrum of subjects. Some are humorous, some are sad, some are descriptive, while others simply convey author David N. Zamet’s thoughts.

His poems contain “the thoughts of a lifetime and I have not yet finished writing. Every day something may come into my head.”

PERHAPS

What shall I do?

            Now the years roll by

            Taking with them in their stride

            Days that I will ne’er see again.

            Old future keeps her secrets well

           And as of old she keeps them fast

           Secure in her fortress of tomorrow,

            Letting none but the present escape her clutches.

           What will be? Not even she can tell

           But like us she tries to guess

           And needs must I, to do the same

           To try and beat her at her game.

            The present and the past I have

            And can caress, but these soon go.

            Gone like the future still to come

            Untouchable till time is run.

            Therefore I ask, what can we do?

            Whom having the past behind, lose before

            We gain the present, which

            Is here and gone again.

Born in London in 1932, David N. Zamet spent World War II in a small village, 60 miles north of London. After serving four years in the Merchant Marine, he spent four years at university studying horticulture. He later moved to Israel, where he married his first late wife and together they had three children. For 37 years, he w...