Poem fractal
0.024 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.
0.0821 − 0.0197i
Drawing the boundary…
0.0741 − 0.0427i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide.
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree;
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.
Mankind is sick, the World distemper'd lies,
Opprest with Sins and Miseries.
Their Sins are Woes; a long corrupted Train
Of Poyson, drawn from Adam's vein,
Stains all his Seed, and all his Kin
Are one Disease of Life within.
They all torment themselves!
The World's one Bedlam, or a greater Cave
Of Mad-men, that do alwaies rave.
The Wise and Good like kind Physicians are,
That strive to heal them by their Care.
They Physick and their Learning calmly use,
Although the Patient them abuse.
For since the Sickness is (they find)
A sad Distemper of the Mind;
All railings they impute,
All Injuries, unto the sore Disease,
They are expresly come to ease!
If we would to the Worlds distemper'd Mind
Impute the Rage which there we find,
We might, even in the midst of all our Foes,
Enjoy and feel a sweet Repose:
Might pity all the Griefs we see,
Anointing every Malady
With precious Oyl and Balm;
And while ourselves are Calm, our Art improve
To rescue them, and shew our Love.
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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