Sands
I fell on a dune and slept,
Sharp grasses by my head:
While armies far-off warred and wept,
I joined the earth instead.
Until I moved my hand
And was awake again
And shook myself out of the sand
To the cold wind of men.
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.
−0.0729 − 0.6254i
Drawing the boundary…
by Ben King
−0.0645 − 0.6474i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I fell on a dune and slept,
Sharp grasses by my head:
While armies far-off warred and wept,
I joined the earth instead.
Until I moved my hand
And was awake again
And shook myself out of the sand
To the cold wind of men.
by Ben King
He came from where he started
And was going where he went.
He hadn't had a smell of food,
Not even had a scent.
He never even muttered once
Till he began to talk,
And when he left the kitchen door
He took the garden walk.
He said: "There's no one with me,
Because I am alone;
I might have scintillated once;
My clothes have always shone.
I got here 'fore the other ones
Because I started first:
The reason I look shabby is
Because I'm dressed the worst."
Then I asked him where he came from —
This was just before we parted,
And he muttered indistinctly,
"Oh, I come from where I started!"
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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