To be told that onycha is made of opercula is not always helpful. ‘Take unto thee sweete spices, Stacte, and Onicha, and Galbanum,’ says the Bible (Exodus, xxx 34). The words are poetic, as referring to something oriental that we don’t know from everyday life.
Perhaps that is why Edith Sitwell used onycha towards the end of her poem ‘Long Steel Grass’: ‘she/ Heard our voices thin and shrill/ As the steely grasses’ thrill,/ Or the sound of the onycha/ When the phoca has the pica.’ Not much assistance, as far as sense goes, can be expected there, since a phoca is a kind of seal, and the pica is a kind of bulimia, taking its name from the magpie. But Dame Edith probably remembered onycha from the Bible, which gives it a resonance useful to her kind of poetry.
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