"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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claws, sun-claws, teeth after death” (lines 38-9), should retreat at the time of “mating
and birth” (line 40). So, the poet offers what solace he can and gentles the animal until
“she let me ease her claws” (line 47). There is an allusion here to Tennyson’s “nature red
in tooth and claw”. Livingstone, I think, struggles with the tension between the Romantic
view of nature as the nurturing mother and a scientifically informed view of nature as
contingent and uncaring.
There is no doubt that Livingstone anthropomorphises the wildcat. His empathy
for the creature’s suffering is patent. But he does not follow the human custom of burying
its dead. Instead he finds a compromise by placing the corpses of the wildcat and her cub
in a tree, out of reach of ground scavengers. He imagines an alternative to the natural
cycle of death and decay but does not say – or cannot say – exactly what this is. The
starting point is a more gentle, composting process where small creatures (beetles, then
maggots, then ants) will feed off the corpses. He imagines that “a cycle of maybe
something more pastoral” will follow. Through the pastoral he alludes to a utopian or
ideal destination for the dead wildcat and her cub. This may be interpreted as a kind of
prayer for the dead animals. In this poem Livingstone is mesmerised by nature. It reflects
a moment, or interlude, where he feels himself to be part of nature and so, idealistically,
he tries to temper its cruelty through human gentleness, extended to the wildcat both in its
painful end to life and in its death.
In another, related poem, “Wheels” (RB 26), an unborn foetus is seen as the centre
around which the world revolves with its “horizon, sun, / the earth and moon” (lines 5-6).
The cub and the foetus both represent future cycles of life and in “Wheels” the foetus is
figured as holy when its skull is said to be “a rosary of bone” (line 20).
“Homoeostasis” 23 (AU 64) is a more complex poem which, through its imagery,
interweaves the themes of religion, inimical or warring Nature, Darwinism, medical
science as humankind’s prop, and humankind’s alienation from the physical or natural
world. These are all explored as antithetical to homoeostasis and demonstrate the
tenuousness of humankind’s natural position. Lovelock points out that homoeostasis in
living systems is not a permanent, fixed state of constancy, but a “dynamic state of
23 The OED defines homoeostasis as: Maintenance of a dynamically stable state within a system by means
of internal regulatory processes that counteract external disturbance of the equilibrium; the state so
maintained; specifically in Physiology, maintenance of relatively constant conditions of the body.