If I'm the faery fool, Dalua — Ay me, the faery fool! How do I know what the rushes say Sighing and shivering night and day Over their shadowy pool? How do I know what the North wind cries. Counting his beads of snow: The menace that lies in the Hunter's eyes How do I know?
If I'm the faery fool, Dalua — Ay me, the faery fool! I cry to those that sent me here. To laugh and jest, to geek and fleer. To scorn at law and rule. "Why did ye also give to me Beauty and peace to know? The ears to hear and the eyes to see And the hands that let all go?"
I cry to them that bade me jest "Why made ye me so slight, Yet put a heart within my breast. An evil gift; an evil guest, To spoil me for delight? Made for mere laughter, answer why Must I have eyes for dool? Take from me tears, or let me die, For I am sick of wisdom, I Dalua, the faery fool."
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.
—
—
0:00
0:00
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.