Lost
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps.
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly.
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes
Poem fractal
0.027 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.
−0.6439 − 0.7432i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.6185 − 0.7356i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps.
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly.
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes
By the Voice in the corries
When the Polestar danceth:
By the Voice on the summits
The dead feet know:
By the soft wet cry
When the Heat-star troubleth:
By the plaining and moaning
Of the Sigh of the Rainbows:
By the four white winds of the world,
Whose father the golden Sun is,
Whose mother the wheeling Moon is,
The North and the South and the East and the West:
By the four good winds of the world,
That Man knoweth,
That One dreadeth,
That God blesseth—
Be all well
On mountain and moorland and lea,
On loch-face and lochan and river,
On shore and shallow and sea!
By the Voice of the Hollow
Where the worm dwelleth:
By the Voice of the Hollow
Where the sea-wave stirs not:
By the Voice of the Hollow
That sun hath not seen yet:
By the three dark winds of the world;
The chill dull breath of the Grave,
The breath from the depths of the Sea,
The breath of To-morrow:
By the white and dark winds of the world,
The four and the three that are seven,
That Man knoweth,
That One dreadeth,
That God blesseth—
Be all well
On mountain and moorland and lea,
On loch-face and lochan and river,
On shore and shallow and sea!
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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