Poem fractal
0.009 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.
−0.4746 − 0.1009i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.4774 − 0.1095i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
When the Winter Way is white in the sky,
And the Vikings ha' laid their war-shields by,
Then I sit by the barrow and make my moan
That I walk alone and I sleep alone
Since sleep holds Thorarin fast.
When the Winter Way shakes its silver snow
On the groaning pines and the graves below,
My heart is more cold than the Winter Way,
And under the gold hair my thoughts are gray,
Since sleep holds Thorarin fast.
What did she give for her wedding-ring?
All that a woman may!
What did the gifts to the giver bring?
Only an idol of clay.
All the sweet dreams of her girlhood years,
All that a heart could hold;
All of her hopes and all of her fears,
All of her smiles and all of her tears.
For one little circle of gold.
Told she the world of the bitter cheat?
Ah, no! With a smiling face
She clothed her idol from head to feet
With the garments of her grace.
And no one knew of the tears she wept;
Her griefs they were never guessed,
For hid in her heart of hearts she kept
Her thorns of woe. And so she slept
With her hands across her breast.
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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