"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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constancy” where living things can move to a new state of constancy. 24 He claims that
Gaia’s history is characterised by homeorhesis, meaning that periods of constancy are
punctuated by shifts to new, different states of constancy (1991: 141). Stephen J. Gould
calls this “punctuated equilibrium” (2002: 766).
Livingstone (as second-person speaker observing himself in the poem) uses the
concept of homoeostasis to reflect a surreal communion or at-oneness with nature when,
through his imagination, he experiences the world through the eyes of an ant and of a
seagull. But, as the final stanza indicates, this position is not sustainable:
A moment you were a matrix, now: ant
and seagull have gone, leaving you to your
humanity, disconnected.
Homoeostasis is thus used as an image for his fleeting interconnection with the web of
life. Through the eye of the ant and the seagull, Livingstone sees the world from an
ecological perspective, experiences homoeostasis or a dynamic state of constancy. The
first stanza introduces the gull, described as “a grey crucifix” (line 2). This religious
image is reiterated in the sixth stanza when the gull’s eyes are, curiously, described as
“papal diamonds” (line 18). Suffering, associated with the image of the cross, is more
strongly conveyed in “the skewers of her [the gull’s] cries” (line 17). The gull also
symbolises the unattainable. The poet appears to momentarily enter her consciousness
and fly with her, but can only see what is below, not what is above. Livingstone twice
addresses her directly with the refrain “Where do you sleep, far-flyer?”.
The first four stanzas describe the natural setting of the beach. A mood of stasis is
created through the words: “motionless”, “hung”, “suspend”, “hunch” and “prone” (lines
2, 3, 4, 7 and 10). Yet, this state of stasis is ominous: the trees and bushes are personified
soldiers who await orders or “marshallings” from the sea. The atmosphere is of
impending war or flood, of cataclysmic natural warfare or destruction. The poet is “prone
on a plumbeous world”, but through imagination escapes gravity and heaviness and
enters a deep ecological state:
you connect
24 Lovelock uses the analogy of a ship’s autopilot device to explain the homoeostatic process: “the ship
may need to deviate to a different course. When this is set, the autopilot rapidly changes the ship’s direction
of motion to a new, stable motion, and homeostasis [sic] then proceeds. This process of sudden moves from
one stable state to a new stable state is known as homeorhesis” (1991: 141).