'White tubeworms heap in snowdrifts around hydrothermal vents' … Sheenagh Pugh's Extremophile. Photograph: Ralph White/CorbisTwo miles below the light, bacteria
live without sun, thrive on sulphur
in a cave of radioactive rock,
and, blind in the night of the ocean floor,
molluscs that feed only on wood
wait for wrecks. White tubeworms heap
in snowdrifts around hydrothermal vents,
at home in scalding heat. Lichens encroach
on Antarctic valleys where no rain
ever fell. There is nowhere
life cannot take hold, nowhere so salt,
so cold, so acid, but some chancer
will be there, flourishing on bare stone,
getting by, gleaning a sparse living
from marine snow, scavenging
light from translucent quartz, as if
lack and hardship could do nothing
but quicken it, this urge
to cling on in the cracks
of the world, or as if this world
itself, so various, so not to be spared
as it is, were the impetus
never to leave it.
• From Short Days, Long Shadows (Seren, £9.99). To order a copy for £7.19 with free UK p&p go to guardianbookshop.co.uk or call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846.
