transmogrified function composition

Using the transmogrifier something like function composition such as:

(define (compose . fs)
  (if (null? fs) (lambda (x) x)
      (lambda (x) ((car fs) ((apply compose (cdr fs)) x)))))

Becomes possible like:

$compose = [$funcs | 
  empty($funcs) ? [$_] : 
       [car($funcs)($compose(cdr($funcs))($_))]];

Which becomes:

$compose = function($funcs) use(&$compose) {
  return empty($funcs) ? function($x) { return $x; } : 
         function($_ = false) use(&$funcs, &$compose) { 
             return apply(car($funcs), array(apply($compose(cdr($funcs)), array($_))));};};

I am not doing an exact copy here because I am not using ". rest" args as I would probably call this function like:

echo $compose({square negate cube})(500); 
//shorter than
echo $compose('square', 'negate', 'cube')(500);

I think the above illustrates that really php IS capable of these sorts of things it's just that in it's incredibly gnarly. With a few syntax tweaks (square bracket closures w/ lexical scope, squiggly bracket arrays w/ barewords as strings, ability to use return value as function) - it's almost livable.