The Ophany
By Cyrus Console
For example, we think that many invariant natural phenomena––stars, fire, faces, complex skyscapes and landscapes, harmonically resonant acoustic phenomena, pure tones and colors, fractally invariant sounds such as wind, rain, and running water––are experienced as beautiful because their invariant properties allow them to function as test patterns to tune our perceptual machinery. The brain, because it “knows” in advance what these cross-generationally invariant signals should be like, can compare the actual input with its innate model of the expected input, and use the difference as a corrective feedback signal.i
Rotor wash, or the downward-flowing
Air by which our helicopters formed
Imprints in the jungle grass beneath
Now stands effectively for Vietnam
Because our understanding of that war
Omitted many things but not the wind
We bowed our heads and fled. In this case we
Refers effectively to other people
A habit we must struggle to forgive.
In 1977 Carter pardoned
Nearly all the draft-dodgers. I was
Born in ’77. That’s why seven
Of all numbers is the lucky one
Why else would Vietnam have seven letters
Ranch Hand was the name of operations
Also known as Trail Dust and Hades
In which diesel fuel and kerosene
Nebulized with certain other compounds
Being then developed to induce
On contact with every broad-leaved plant
Widespread, uncontrolled and lethal growth
Rained softly over seven million
Acres of jungle and plantation
In efforts to deny the Viet Cong
Nourishment or places of concealment.
By seven corporations was production
Of these compounds overseen; the bulk
Was carried out by people at Monsanto
Roundup, the number-one selling
Agrichemical of all time
Is brought to you by people at Monsanto.
NutraSweet’s another of Monsanto’s
Bright ideas like putting caffeine
Or vanillin in the soft drink Coke.
We drink Coca-Cola long time.
Remarketing is what the language suffered
Agonies and died for, that we might
Inspirit dying products with the word
No barrier between food and drug
Blood and brain, flavors, colors, lines
Of sight, fire, product might withstand
What Godard said. It isn’t blood. It’s red
Red is a stop or vantage in the brain.
All things red to varying degrees
If this stop be played, reverberate.
No redness stands the tolling of the name
By but rings a sympathetic change.
Outriding any word group arches one
Word, however, disentangled, ur-
Redintegrative, groundless, firmamental
’A cried out “God, God, God!” 3 or 4 times
It matters little how. For if one does
Not deafen or wax wood before that call-note
Belike he never knew the touch of it
Or what you will. Father, stay your hand
What’s that rough noise in the oleander
Riddle me your bad orthography
And be morphologized, Diet Rite
I paid good money to have words with you
Never mind this lady-with-a-past
Bladder-cancer-in-some-rats business
Or anything like that. Honestly
While Monsanto’s sweeteners exceed
Real sugar’s sweetness one hundred
And sixtyfold and have no bitter aftertaste
I care more for yours. You were the first
No-calorie soft drink and you meant it
By God, by cyclamate and saccharin
Overwhelming nutriment in vitro
White Grape Pure Zero Golden Peach Pure Zero
Respecting the American sweet tooth
As Americans colloquially term it
I refer you to the case of diet soda.
Nothing else says Eucharist quite like
Black seltzer roiling in a glass
Of ice cubes brighter than the first
Water. Only in Atlanta might
Random single-syllable names be
Annihilated by the quarter million
In search of TaB. Coke’s onomasts did good
Now our tongue is blanching in a Ziploc
Baggie sealed within a Ziploc baggie
Of melted ice. Hold our tongue until
We get to the hospital okay
Rambo was the wrong man to have made
Angry, Sheriff. God made Rambo angry
In his image, Lawyer of the Wood
Named for “the sound of force.” When John J. Rambo
Bit into his apple you could hear
Operational Detachment Alpha
Wading though the artificial flood.
Rambo invented colors for the vowels,
Asshole. Rambo bled American
Indian blood; some say Rambo bled O
Negative. Rambo. Universal Donor,
Bedwetter, Horsebreaker, Firestarter, Champion
Of Common Man, Painters’ Painter, Grass
Widower, Oracle, Personage, Friend of a Friend
Real men take half measures
A real man takes something like thirty minutes
Inside this doll and turns them into winters.
No one loves a doll with thirty winters
Bunched atop his neck but here as elsewhere
One cannot escape the way the running
Water echoes in the half listening
Rock interlaid with bright green
Algae lining the descent to where
Incarcerated, the subnormal persons
Nonchalantly hand out little mirrors
Between the vertical gray elements
On which the modern sense of composition
Would otherwise entirely depend
Render us a synanthropic world
Assist them to the ground, these gentle creatures
Intending present rupture to proceedings
Now is not the time to talk about
Bears and wolves, how gentle creatures made
Out in the library of everything
Written or how on the other hand
Real bears and wolves were making out
At the time having nothing to offer
In trade beside their bodies part or whole
No I take that back as for the wolf
Breath is so much fog but bears’ breath fogs
Over the bright lugs bolting their faces
Which are long, to knotted lengths of rope
Regard the tense shift, Hill 937
And my guide to them: wherefore this color
If signature joined will to deed. And now
Now began the howls of agony
Brothers; the sight, the sound of blood, a place
On First and Main, a little blow, a round
Where everybody knows your name, a word
Regarding the formation of a past
As if by design, a once and future
Indicative of less experience
No color anymore, who conjure love
But know only her name, not what she does
Other than take all day to shade a field
With crossing it. The line is its own place
Really. How many syllables an hour
And how many syllables in fire
In seven, how many syllables. You don’t
Need to be a physicist to run
Bawling down the lane in shower shoes
Or recognize a broken safety culture
When you see it crawling with clear flame
Reading King’s English in quotation
Ancient, colorless and odorless
It ain’t Coca-Cola; it’s rice.
Next we were asked to drink an awful tasting
Brown liquid I’m guessing was iodine
Oh Papa-san, they cut away our clothes
Wringing their hands, crying out what news
Resentful product with orange color
Among the falling there is jealousy
Invidious clouds swim naked in the starry
Night. Night, coveting the seven colors
Boards and scuttles each the seven morrows
Overtaking them upon the seven
Waters. Seven also are the sorrows
Richard of York gave battle in vain
Agents, Messrs. Green, Purple, Orange
II alias Super Orange, Dalapon
Nou goth sonne under wod
Blue, Tandex, Diquat, Monuron
Orange, Dinoxol, Diuron, Pink, Trinoxol
White. Much sorwe have I Bromacil
Red is the humblest symbology
As stupid as our blank discontented
Inhalation of organic solvents
Now is the winter of society
Black and red identify as white
On the question whether God has fitted us
With eyes I remain of seven minds
RED
ARANGE
IELLOW
NREEN
BLUE
ONDIGO
WIOLET
for Tom Raworth
i. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
Cyrus Console, "The Ophany" from The Odicy. Copyright © 2011 by Cyrus Console. Reprinted by permission of Omnidawn Publishing.
Source:
The Odicy
(Omnidawn Publishing, 2011)