We never know we go
We never know we go, — when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more.
Poem fractal
0.010 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.
−0.2287 − 0.6348i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.2273 − 0.6250i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
We never know we go, — when we are going
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more.
The leafless trees, the untidy stack,
Last rainy summer raised in haste,
Watch the sky turn from fair to black
And watch the river fill and waste.
But never a footstep comes to trouble
The rooks among the new-sown corn
Or pigeons rising from late stubble
And flashing lighter as they turn.
Or if a footstep comes, 'tis mine,
Sharp on the road or soft on grass:
Silence divides along my line
And shuts behind me as I pass.
No other comes, no labourer
To cut his shaggy truss of hay,
Along the road no traveller,
Day after day, day after day.
And even I, when I come here,
Move softly on, subdued and still,
Lonely as death, though I can hear
Men shouting on the other hill.
Day after day, though no one sees,
The lonely place no different seems,
The trees, the stack, still images
Constant in who can say whose dreams?
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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