Poem fractal
0.024 apart. A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.
This number is read from the build of the lines. The bright edge is that number, carried outward until the pattern repeats.
−0.1136 − 0.9205i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1193 − 0.9440i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
‘Twas a long Parting — but the time
For Interview — had Come —
Before the Judgment Seat of God —
The last — and second time
These Fleshless Lovers met —
A Heaven in a Gaze —
A Heaven of Heavens — the Privilege
Of one another’s Eyes —
No Lifetime — on Them —
Appareled as the new
Unborn — except They had beheld —
Born infiniter — now —
Was Bridal — e’er like This?
A Paradise — the Host —
And Cherubim — and Seraphim —
The unobtrusive Guest —
In Connaught and Leinster
Tears wait for me,
But I dwell merrily
Here by the sea.
My kirtle's gold-bordered,
Gold tires my hair,
And red quicken-berries
That Oscar once bare.
In Connaught my mother
Sits by her door,
And calls her lost children
Over and o'er.
A high hall of Leinster
Shuts in from me,
Maive, Eily, Mairé,
Mairé the Shee.
Maive she has yellow hair
Softer than silk:
Eily has hazel eyes
And skin like milk.
Mairé's hair, chaffer-black,
Hangs to her knee —
Eyes gray and bright as swords,
Mairé the Shee.
Eily sings merrily
All the day long,
Mairé spins wearily
To Eily's song.
Black threads of sin she spins,
Red threads of blame,
White threads and yellow threads,
Love: death: and shame.
Which did he dearest hold,
Mairé the Shee,
Who sent him down to death
In the gray sea!
Eily his first beloved,
Or Maive he wed?
Or I whom once he crowned
With berries red?
A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. The large form and the small form are the same kind of thing. A poem can be drawn that way. The shape of the whole comes from the shape of the lines.
Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.
The number under the picture is the poem constant. It is read from the build of the lines: their length, how uneven they are, the size of the stanzas, the share of vowels, and the way the lines end. A new word moves the number when it changes that build. The same poem always gives the same number.
Drawn on its own, that number sits in a quiet part of the plane, and most poems would look like the same soft disk. So the number is carried outward along its own direction until it meets the edge of the Mandelbrot set, where the shape turns sharp. The picture is the Julia set of that meeting place.
Each point on the canvas is folded again and again by one small rule. Points that stay near the rule form the dark interior. Points that rush away become the coloured bands. The hue comes from the poem constant, and the brightest bands turn toward gold. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.
Branching draws the poem as a tree. Each turn follows a line, and every smaller branch repeats that pattern. A longer line reaches farther. The letters at the start of a line bend the next turn. A higher share of vowels opens the branches wider.
The trunk takes its colour from the poem constant and warms toward gold at the tips. When the poem has more than one stanza, gold forks leave the trunk. Each fork is a stanza beyond the first, up to three. The tree divides where the poem divides. One stanza remains a single trunk.
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