Poem fractal
0.064 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.
by William Stanley Braithwaite
−0.7861 − 0.0015i
Drawing the boundary…
by Dylan Thomas
−0.8413 − 0.0345i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by William Stanley Braithwaite
I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of tomorrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
by Dylan Thomas
With windmills turning wrong directions,
And signposts pointing up and down
Towards destruction and redemption,
No doubt the wind on which the rooks
Tumble, not flying, is false,
Plays scurvy tricks with values and intentions,
Guides and blows wickedly, for larks
Find hard to dart against a cloud,
To London’s turned, and thirsty loads
Of men with flannel shirts
And girls with flowered hats
Intent on visiting the famous spots,
Ride in their charabancs on roads
That lead away to dirty towns
Dirtier with garages and cheap tea signs.
Faith in divinity would solve most things,
For then the wrong wind certainly
Would be the devil’s wind, and the high trinity
Be guiltless of the windy wrongs.
But ways have changed, and most ways lead
To different places than were said
By those who planned the obvious routes
And now, mistaking the direction,
On miles of horizontal milestones,
Perplexed beyond perplexion,
Catch their poor guts.
The wind has changed, blown inside out
The coverings of dark and light,
Made meaning meaningless. The wrong wind stirs,
Puffed, old with venom, from a crusted mouth.
The changed wind blows, and there’s a choice of signs
To Heaven’s turned, and pious loads
Of neophytes take altered roads.
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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