There was a wood, a witches' wood, All the trees therein were pale. They bore no branches green and good, But as it were a gray nun's veil.
They talked and chattered in the wind From morning dawn to set of sun, Like men and women that have sinned, Whose thousand evil tongues are one.
Their roots were like the hands of men, Grown hard and brown with clutching gold. Their foliage women's tresses when The hair is withered, thin, and old.
There never did a sweet bird sing For happy love about his nest. The clustered bats on evil wing Each hollow trunk and bough possessed.
And in the midst a pool there lay Of water white, as tho' a scare Had frightened off the eye of day And kept the Moon reflected there.
Years are nothing; Days alone count; These, and the nights. I have seen the grey stars marching, And the green bubbles in wine, And there are Gothic vaults of sleep.
My cathedral Has one great spire Tawny in the sunlight. Gargoyles haunt its nave; High up amid its dark-arches Forgotten songs live shadowy. Gold and sardonyx Deck its altars. Its mighty roof Is copper rivering with the rain.
Tomorrow lightning swords will come And thunder of cannon. They will unrivet this roof Of mighty copper. Before the eyes of my gargoyles, In the sound of my forgotten songs, They will take it. And as the rain sluices down I shall have to follow my roof into the war.
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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.