Poem fractal
0.044 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.
−0.6435 − 0.0825i
Drawing the boundary…
by Dylan Thomas
−0.6644 − 0.0433i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Of all the Souls that stand create —
I have elected — One —
When Sense from Spirit — files away —
And Subterfuge — is done —
When that which is — and that which was —
Apart — intrinsic — stand —
And this brief Drama in the flesh —
Is shifted — like a Sand —
When Figures show their royal Front —
And Mists — are carved away,
Behold the Atom — I preferred —
To all the lists of Clay!
by Dylan Thomas
Lift up your face, light
Breaking, stare at the sky
Consoling for night by day
That chases the ghosts of the trees
And the ghosts of the brain,
Making fresh what was stale
In the unsleeping mummery
Of men and creatures horribly
Staring at stone walls.
Lift up your head, let
Comfort come through the devil’s clouds,
The nightmare’s mist
Suspended from the devil’s precipice,
Let comfort come slowly, lift
Up your hand to stroke the light,
Its honeyed cheek, soft-talking mouth,
Lift up the blinds over the blind eyes.
Out of unsleeping cogitations,
When the skeleton of war
Is with the corpse of peace,
(Notes not in sympathy, discord, unease),
The only visitor,
Must come content.
Therefore lift up, see, stroke the light.
Content shall come after a twisted night
If only with sunlight.
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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