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}

Source: The Odicy (Omnidawn Publishing, 2011)