The Spider
A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white—
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of gnome,
Himself himself inform—
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy—
Poem fractal
0.038 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.
−0.3649 − 1.0532i
Drawing the boundary…
by W. H. Davies
−0.3312 − 1.0361i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white—
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of gnome,
Himself himself inform—
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy—
by W. H. Davies
I saw the fog grow thick,
Which soon made blind my ken;
It made tall men of boys,
And giants of tall men.
It clutched my throat, I coughed;
Nothing was in my head
Except two heavy eyes
Like balls of burning lead.
And when it grew so black
That I could know no place,
I lost all judgment then,
Of distance and of space.
The street lamps, and the lights
Upon the halted cars,
Could either be on earth
Or be the heavenly stars.
A man passed by me close,
I asked my way, he said,
"Come, follow me, my friend"—
I followed where he led.
He rapped the stones in front,
"Trust me," he said, "and come";
I followed like a child—
A blind man led me home.
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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