According to Pythagoras

MICHAEL LONGLEY | Ne Lonely A a = According to Pythagoras When in good time corpses go off and ooze in the heat Creepy-crawlies breed in them. Bury your prize bull (A well-known experiment) — and from the putrid guts Swarm flower-crazy bees, industrious country-types Working hard, as did their host, with harvest in mind. An interred war-horse produces hornets. Remove A shore-crab’s hollow claw, lay it to rest: the result Is a scorpion charging with its tail bent like a hook. Worms cosy in cocoons of white thread grow into Butterflies, souls of the dead. Any farmer knows that. Germs in mud generate green frogs: legless at first They soon sprout swimming and jumping equipment. A she-bear’s cub is a lump of meat whose stumpy Non-legs she licks into shape in her own image. The honey-bees’ larvae born in those waxy hexagons Only get feet and wings later on. That's obvious. Think of peacocks. eagles, doves, the bird-family As a whole, all starting inside eggs: hard to believe. There's a theory that in the grave the backbone rots Away and the spinal cord turns into a snake. The fundamental interconnectedness of all things Is incredible enough, but did you know that Hyenas change sex? The female mounted by a male Just minutes before, becomes a male herself. Then There's the chameleon that feeds off wind and air And takes the colour of whatever it's standing on. Air transforms lynxes' urine into stones and hardens Coral, that softly swaying underwater plant. | could go on and on with these scientific facts. If it wasn’t so late I'd tell you a whole lot more. Michael Longley won the Whitbread Poetry Award for Gorse Fires (Secker & Warburg, 1991). Poems: 1963-1983 is published by Penguin. 66/Poetry Review