Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

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.

Sketch of a Man on a Platform

by Mina Loy

0.2566 − 0.3746i

Drawing the boundary…

He Never Expected Much

by Thomas Hardy

0.2831 − 0.3734i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.

Sketch of a Man on a Platform

by Mina Loy

Man of absolute physical equilibrium
You stand so straight on your legs
Every plank or clod you plant your feet on
Becomes roots for those limbs

Among the men you accrete to yourself
You are more heavy
And more light
Force being most equitably disposed
Is easiest to lift from the ground
So at the same time
Your movements
Unassailable
Savor of the airy-fairy of the ballet
The essence of a Mademoiselle Genée
Winks in the to-and-fro of your cuff-links

Your projectile nose
Has meddled in the more serious business
Of the battle-field
With the same incautious aloofness
Of intense occupation
That it snuffles the trail of the female
And the comfortable
Passing odors of love

Your genius
So much less in your brain

Than in your body
Reinforcing the hitherto negligible
Qualities
Of life
Deals so exclusively with
The vital
That it is equally happy expressing itself
Through the activity of pushing
THINGS
In the opposite direction
To that which they are lethargically willing to go
As in the amative language
Of the eyes

Fundamentally unreliable
You leave others their initial strength
Concentrating
On stretching the theoretic elastic of your conceptions
Till the extent is adequate
To the hooking on
Of any— or all
Forms of creative idiosyncracy
While the occasional snap
Of actual production
Stings the face of the public.

He Never Expected Much

by Thomas Hardy

Well, World, you have kept faith with me, 
Kept faith with me; 
Upon the whole you have proved to be 
Much as you said you were. 
Since as a child I used to lie 
Upon the leaze and watch the sky, 
Never, I own, expected I 
That life would all be fair. 

'Twas then you said, and since have said, 
Times since have said, 
In that mysterious voice you shed 
From clouds and hills around: 
"Many have loved me desperately, 
Many with smooth serenity, 
While some have shown contempt of me 
Till they dropped underground. 

"I do not promise overmuch, 
Child; overmuch; 
Just neutral-tinted haps and such, 
You said to minds like mine. 
Wise warning for your credit's sake! 
Which I for one failed not to take, 
And hence could stem such strain and ache 
As each year might assign. 

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