Right away, let me admit that the notion that acid has anything to do with Morgenstern\u2019s poem is, at best, an afterthought, the mental counterpart of persistence of vision<\/a> which sometimes produces the rainbow effects he wasn’t alluding to in his second line. The highlights gracing Morgenstern\u2019s entrancing yellow field of buttercups can be explained without resorting \u00a0to hallucination. Spring having sprung, we can easily verify that fresh leafage does sometimes have reddish edges to it, usually shifting definitively to green within a matter of days. There is thus no need to relate Morgenstern\u2019s poetic vision to the\u00a0visual effects produced by psychedelics<\/a>\u00a0 — or to have written any of what follows below. His \u201cred leaf sorrel\u201d reflected acuity of vision rather than enhancement of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n That said, anyone who has dropped acid or imbibed or ingested or smoked serious psychedelics like mescaline, peyote, or psilocybin will recognize the aura of contrasting colors which graces objects in the visual world when on a trip, like halos except not just on saints, but everywhere. Lucky survivors of that now distant epoch will see where I am coming from, as the jargon of those times put it.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n So the motif of red-and-green decidedly captured my eye, though my attention was further captivated by the sorrel, one of my favorite edible weeds. And, as I came to excavate this connection, I recalled that long before, in fact during my brief phase of home-schooling, actually home-kindergartening, I had intuited, independently I like to believe, the binary nature of complementary colors, not just red-green, but orange-blue and yellow-violet, though I always called the last hue purple. Was it my own foreknowledge and expectation of red going well with green which set the grounds for the perception I had while tripping? Or were those fractal special effects in fact there, wherever that might mean when under the influence of lysergic acid?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n What I can point to is a repeated pattern in my poetry, where I often turn when trying to understand or express myself. \u00a0For example, in Rara avis<\/a>, where I describe a bird-watching expedition in Mexico in quest of a trogon<\/a>, I write:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n I looked up through\u00a0the rainbow spray where <\/p>\n I intended to echo the baroque motif of green thoughts<\/a>, but with a spectral twist\u00a0of my own, playing on antinomies conjoined, emerald scarlet, ruby green. \u00a0At the beginning of the poem red bromeliads had been set like jewels in a background of tropical shade.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n In another poem,\u00a0Stoic Garden<\/a>, this image of complementaries returns in a sequence starting from a statement of the primary colors themselves before adducing \u00a0antitheses first phenomenological, then corporeal.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u2026 green\u00a0for red, I can\u2019t otherwise tell you what it means, this serial substitution of contrasts, green and red, being and absence, a regular heartbeat for a spasm of an undefined sort.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n In another this time explicitly\u00a0Lysergic Vision<\/a>, red and green themselves are not \u00a0denominated but the naked branches of elms in winter are tinged with spectral \u00a0fringes in the refracted glare of winter sun off the skin of the trunks and limbs of a stand of trees in a field of crusted snow one blue-sky February afternoon in Wisconsin:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n O, the spectral symmetry of the elms, Those sutures of sky and soil were polychromatic, in my memory to be sure, but actually, then and there. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n In my spiritual life there is a before and an after LSD. I haven’t touched the stuff for over half a century, since the summer of 1967, but in my opinion LSD was the perfect entheogen<\/a> \u2014 a “class of psychoactive substances<\/a> that induce any type of spiritual experience<\/a> aimed at development<\/a>“.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The power of those entheogenic experiences was such that my memories of them were eventually gathered in\u00a0D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Once they are with me I know they belong, For over a half-century I’ve perceived transcendence or immanence or any psychically aware state through the lens of those LSD-driven bubbles of expanded consciousness.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n D\u00e9j\u00e0 vus are now all I have left to cling to, like the dreams in the last line of my translation. I worship their fleeting instants as unique instances of reunion with … the godhead? No, that puts too much of a theist spin on it. But the metaphor of communion may hold. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vus are like sacrements to me, except there is no need to confess in order to receive them.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n For those who read German, here is finally a classic exegesis<\/a>\u00a0of the Morgenstern source, a reading that doesn\u2019t come down to mounting ones own hobby horse, as I have done here. He says, dismounting, and offering with apologies to any who have been waiting for it, the poem itself:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Butterblumengelbe Wiesen, Wohlgesangdurchschwellte B\u00e4ume,
\nmy creature should have been,\u00a0emerald scarlet in the air,
\nthoughts of ruby green \u2026<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/220px-Harpactes_erythrocephalus_-_Khao_Yai.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Unknown-1.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nabsence for the flutter of\u00a0a wing,
\na heartbeat for a spasm.<\/p>\n
\nretinal veins through which suns stagger
\non stilts, suturing folds of soil and sky!<\/p>\n
\nthese spells when I do what I know I\u2019ve done.
\nThey start with a memory, where ought to be none,
\nan onset of symptoms something is wrong.
\nThen reigns within a split second of grace.
\nFamiliar feelings are stripped of their name.
\nWhat is marvelous springs from one and the same
\nutterly common theme I cannot place.
\nSome quirk or trick of thought quells my fear,
\nmakes the moment\u2019s scattered parts cohere,
\nshows behind the hubbub and din there swells
\na hum I might be able to hear
\nif I ceased listening, a drone which dwells
\nand will\u00a0still when I disappear.<\/p>\n
\nsauerampferrot get\u00f6nt,
\n\u2013\u00a0O du \u00fcberreiches Sprie\u00dfen,
\nwie das Aug dich nie gew\u00f6hnt!<\/p>\n
\nwunderbl\u00fctenschneebereift \u2013
\nja, f\u00fcrwahr, ihr zeigt uns Tr\u00e4ume,
\nwie die Brust sie kaum begreift.<\/p>\n