By kind permission of Ruth Padel, a descendant of Charles Darwin, from Darwin - A Life in Poems {Chatto and Windus}

 

“I’ve sent ten thousand barnacles out

of the house and am sorting species notes.”

With Etty, he’s bred and dissected

a thousand pigeons, to demonstrate

they’re all descended from the same rock dove.

 

“Pouters,” “Tipplers,” lovely “Fan-Toes”:

white down on pink claws, pleats

of a ballerina curtseying the floor.

 

“Mortal illness in man due, no doubt,

to hereditary tendencies to disease,

which clear away the weak.” More -

 

was it because of him  that Annie died?

“My dread is hereditary ill-health.

Are marriages between first cousins

doomed to deformity and illness? Effects

of inbreeding – only the fittest survive?”