Square sheets—they saw the marble only into Flat prison slabs there at the marble quarry At the turning of the road around the roots of the mountain Where the straight road would seem to ply below the stone, that fierce Profile of marble spiked with yonder Palms against the sunset's towering sea, and maybe Against mankind. It is at times—
In dusk, as though this island lifted, floated In Indian baths. At Cuban dusk the eyes Walking the straight road toward thunder— This dry road silvering toward the shadow of the quarry —It is at times as though the eyes burned hard and glad And did not take the goat path quivering to the right, Wide of the mountain—thence to tears and sleep— But went on into marble that does not weep.
Another year!—another deadly blow! Another mighty Empire overthrown! And we are left, or shall be left, alone; The last that dares to struggle with the Foe. 'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know That in ourselves our safety must be sought; That by our own right hands it must be wrought, That we must stand unpropp'd, or be laid low. O Dastard whom such foretaste doth not chear! We shall exult, if They who rule the land Be Men who hold its many blessings dear, Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal Band, Who are to judge of danger which they fear, And honour which they do not understand.
—
—
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.