The poem
my birth =
( my death )
in the cold blue void
the firmament
evokes a swirling cloud
so proud of itself the vaporous spirit
struggles with existence
… and disappears
the firmament
evokes a swirling cloud
so proud of itself the vaporous spirit
struggles with existence
… and disappears
Terms that are stanzas
Nothing in the form says a term has to be a phrase. Two of these four are whole stanzas, and they sit in the proportion the same way a single word would: the value of my birth is to the value of my death as the value of the firmament’s proud swirling cloud is to the value of the vaporous spirit that struggles and disappears.
A similar triangles poem is a proportion, a ⁄ b = d ⁄ e, and it can be rearranged without changing what it claims. Solved for any of its four terms, a stanza can end up on the left of the equals sign.