I say that words are men and when we spell In alphabets we deal with living things; With feet and thighs and breasts, fierce heads, strong wings; Maternal Powers, great Bridals, Heaven and Hell. There is a menace in the tales we tell. From out the throne from which all language springs Voices proceed and fires and thunderings. Oh when we speak, Great God, let us speak well. Beware of shapes, beware of letterings, For in them lies such magic as alters dream, Shakes cities down and moves the inward scheme. Beware the magic of the coin that sings. These coins are graved with supernatural powers And magic wills that are more strong than ours.
Think you that I will drain the dregs of Love, I who have quaffed the sweetness on its brink? Now by the steadfast burning stars above, Better to faint of thirst than thuswise drink. What! shall we twain who saw love's glorious fires Flame toward the sky and flush Heaven's self with light, Crouch by the embers as the glow expires, And huddle closer from mere dread of night? No! cast love's goblet in oblivion's well, Scatter love's ashes o'er the field of time! Yet, ere we part, one kiss whereon to dwell When life sounds senseless as some feeble rhyme. Lo! as lips touch, anew Love's cresset glows, And Love's sweet cup refills and overflows.
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Track 1
How this picture is made
What a fractal is
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.
How the boundary is drawn
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.
What the branching signifies
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.