The storm comes slowly up the skies. The valley in its shadow lies, Yet still a light as faint as hope Lies all along the sheep-trimmed slope And fain would save the distant tower From darkness yet another hour, But vainly from the tempest flies.
The herons from the marsh have gone, Beholding how the dark draws on. The beech-tree yonder on the hill, Where silly sheep are feeding still, 'Twixt light and lightning shuddering stands, A landmark between alien lands — Each leaf aghast in the hot breath That whispers to all trees of death.
The sheep feed stolidly, nor know How near their heads the lightnings go. The old tower not more careless stands Of human wrath and human hands Than these meek things that without fear The lightnings see, the thunders hear, Nor cease from feeding to and fro.
The syphillitic selling violets calmly and daisies By the subway news-stand knows how hyacinths
This April morning offers hurriedly In bunches sorted freshly—and bestows On every purchaser (of heaven perhaps)
His eyes—like crutches hurtled against glass Fall mute and sudden (dealing change for lilies) Beyond the roses that no flesh can pass.
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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.