Also to be an even closer conversion would require apply to tie @squares to a square generator

Ok, perhaps not a square generator, but maybe something like this

use strict;

{
  package Tie::Array::Apply;

  use overload
    '@{}'    => sub { $_[0]->{list} },
    fallback => 1;

  use Tie::Array;

  @Tie::Array::Apply::ISA = qw( Tie::StdArray );

  sub TIEARRAY {
    my $class = shift;

    bless { func => shift, list => [@_], array => []}, $class;
  }

  sub FETCH {
    my($self,$pos) = @_;

    return $self->{array}->[$pos]
        if exists $self->{array}->[$pos];

    return undef
        if $pos >= @{ $self->{list} };

    local $_ = $self->{list}->[$pos];
    return $self->{array}->[$pos] = $self->{func}->();
  }
}

sub bind_apply(&@) {
  tie my @ret, 'Tie::Array::Apply', @_;
  return @ret;
}

my @bind_squares = bind_apply { $_ * $_ } 2 .. 5;

print "bind_apply: ", join(', ', @bind_squares), $/;

__output__

bind_apply: 4, 9, 16, 25
[download]

That code will lazily evaluate a list where each indice is bound to a function which has the appropriate element in the initial list applied to it. But now it doesn't have the recursive behaviour demonstrated in the original perl6 function so no longer needs a funky prototype or multimethod dispatch. Ho hum.
HTH

_________
broquaint