I watch the happier people of the house Come in and out, and talk, and go their ways; I sit and gaze at them; I cannot rouse My heavy mind to share their busy days.
I watch them glide, like skaters on a stream, Across the brilliant surface of the world. But I am underneath: they do not dream How deep below the eddying flood is whirl'd.
They cannot come to me, nor I to them; But, if a mightier arm could reach and save, Should I forget the tide I had to stem? Should I, like these, ignore the abysmal wave?
Yes! in the radiant air how could I know How black it is, how fast it is, below?
Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with gray eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold.
—
—
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.