Amorphous is the mind; its quality Is in its fibre, not its form; If it desire to fly it puts on wings, Awkwardly, not like a bird At first (though later); the rustle of a thing half-heard Can twist it as iron at times is twisted by a wind-storm or word after word Can pummel it for hours yet leave it like a leaf on a still day unstirred.
But a man’s habit clings And he will wear tomorrow what today he wears.
The mind is happy in the air, happy to be up there with Learning feathers, but the man loathes it.
The mind cries “Up! Oh, up! Oh, let me try to fly! Look! I can lift you!” but he smothers its cry; Out of thrift, and fear of next year's feathers, he clothes it in last years things And tries his best to button across a keelshaped breast a coat knobbed out by new wings.
By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair: But all night as the moon so changeth she; Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy, And subtle serpents gliding in her hair. By day she wooes me to the outer air, Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety: But through the night, a beast she grins at me, A very monster void of love and prayer. By day she stands a lie: by night she stands, In all the naked horror of the truth, With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands. Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell My soul to her, give her my life and youth, Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?
—
—
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.