Life is bitter. All the faces of the years, Young and old, are gray with travail and with tears. Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep? In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers, Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours… Let me sleep.
Riches won but mock the old, unable years; Fame's a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears; Love must wither, or must live alone and weep. In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers, While we slumber, death approaches through the hours… Let me sleep.
Because you have no fear to mingle Wings with those of greater part, So like me, with song I single Your sweet impudence of heart. And when prouder feathers go where Summer holds her leafy show, You still come to us from nowhere Like grey leaves across the snow. In back ways where odd and end go To your meals you drop down sure, Knowing every broken window Of the hospitable poor. There is no bird half so harmless, None so sweetly rude as you, None so common and so charmless, None of virtues nude as you. But for all your faults I love you, For you linger with us still, Though the wintry winds reprove you And the snow is on the hill.
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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.