Nautilus
(for W. Evans Hoyle, with apologies to
Allen Ginsberg)
- I saw one of the best minds of his generation go on
a
- graphic voyage,
- examining depicting drawing illustrating the
most
- exquisite of cephalopods,
- dragging himself away from a life of medical anatomy
to
- skillfully dissect creatures of dark seas that live
in
- coiled shells,
- who practised teuthology at every opportunity,
- who indexed Sepiidae Gonatidae Sepiolidae
Loliginidae
- Pyroteuthis among others,
- who described Trivia in splendid detail of
seemingly little
- consequence,
- who brought head-foots and bobtails out of the
shadows
- into the light through the affection of the
inkpot,
- who portrayed Octopus marmoratus like
Holbein’s
- blackwork or Avercamp’s wintery scenes,
- who wrote a lengthy Report on the
Cephalopoda
- collected by H.M.S. Challenger during
1873–1876,
- who had some of his type specimen destroyed for
others
- to move theirs forward,
- who created a library of books prints and
reprints
- monographs and obscurities,
- and who was the first Director of the National Museum
of
- Wales and stayed for 16 years,
- ah, Dr. Hoyle, your name will forever conjure up
- impressions of the deep,
- evoking associations of unchartered waters alive
with
- squid and cuttlefish,
- your images have left me amazed and in wonder of
- worlds unseen and shells untouched.