He came from where he started And was going where he went. He hadn't had a smell of food, Not even had a scent. He never even muttered once Till he began to talk, And when he left the kitchen door He took the garden walk.
He said: "There's no one with me, Because I am alone; I might have scintillated once; My clothes have always shone. I got here 'fore the other ones Because I started first: The reason I look shabby is Because I'm dressed the worst."
Then I asked him where he came from — This was just before we parted, And he muttered indistinctly, "Oh, I come from where I started!"
I sang me a song, a tiny song, A song that was sweet to my soul, And set it a-float on the sea of chance In search of a happy goal.
I said to my song: "Go on, go on And lodge in a tender spot Of some human soul where the fires of hate And selfishness are not."
My song went on but a little space And hied it back to me; And fell at my feet in a sorry plight— The victim of cruelty.
I gazed a moment and quickly saw Just how it had come about, A cruel critic had caught my song And probed the soul of it out.
O, poor indeed is the human mind (And why was it ever wrought?) That can thrive on husk in the form of words, And not on a sturdy thought.
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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.