Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

0.078 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.

Lost Love

by Thomas Hardy

−0.1882 − 1.1323i

Drawing the boundary…

Blood-Sweet

by Richard

−0.1494 − 1.1997i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

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

Lost Love

by Thomas Hardy

I play my sweet old airs — 
The airs he knew 
When our love was true — 
But he does not balk 
His determined walk, 
And passes up the stairs. 

I sing my songs once more, 
And presently hear 
His footstep near 
As if it would stay; 
But he goes his way, 
And shuts a distant door. 

So I wait for another morn, 
And another night 
In this soul-sick blight; 
And I wonder much 
As I sit, why such 
A woman as I was born! 

Blood-Sweet

by Richard

He hung on the dark root,  
the tiger breathing under him  
like a hot, patient earth.

Two mice came—  
night-mouse, day-mouse—  
and ate the living fibre  
that held him to the world.

Then the fruit:  
a small, sudden redness  
in the leaves,  
warm, ripe,  
blood-sweet.

He put it to his mouth.  
The flesh gave.  
The juice ran into him.

And the quick of his blood  
woke,  
even as the vine thinned,  
even as the beast waited—

Life,  
naked and complete,  
in the last ripe instant  
before the fall.

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