"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

looking back across the same charred distance…
(lines 54-58)
The poem explores the link between the destruction of cultures and the destruction of
natural resources and embodies the tension between good science and technological
destructiveness. Science contains implicit hope, for the measuring of pollution levels (the
noting of “adverse bacteriological facts”) is the first step to ensuring potable water.
There is no question that humankind’s alienation from nature is a strong preoccupation in
Livingstone’s poetry. Other poems which can be included under this theme are: the
sonnets “Drought” and “To Our Tomorrows” from The Skull in the Mud (reprinted in
Selected Poems 17 and 18); two poems from Eyes Closed Against the Sun, “One
Elephant” (20) and “The Heritage” (42); a number of poems from Sjambok and Other
Poems of Africa, “Adamastor Resuscitated” (12), “Transactions” (15), “Zebra” (33),
“Fishport, Cape” (41), “The King” (42) and “The Lost Mine” (52). The Anvil’s
Undertone, too, contains mainly poems which depict humankind as apart from nature:
“Rock Art” (16), “The Zoo Affair” (41), “Bataleur” (45), “Veld and Vlei Poem” (49),
“Isotopes” (60) and “The Paladin in Conglomerate” (67), which is examined at the end of
this chapter.
Is this alienation a result of the human ability to reason? Livingstone implicitly
grapples with this question in the above poems. For example, “Africa” and “August
Zulu” both examine how technological advances can lead to human abuse of the Earth,
while “Falconer on a Skyscraper” explores the effect on the human psyche of
urbanisation and the loss of instinctual knowledge. “The Genetic Blueprint of Roses, Etc”
examines the consequences of artificial as opposed to natural selection, and in
“Elements” Livingstone uses the voice of a tree to give a (concealed) sermon on human
wanton destruction of the natural environment. Livingstone therefore paints a bleak
picture and offers no redemptive solutions in these poems. The next section examines
those poems which do see some redemptive hope.
100
3. Ecological equilibrium
In “Road Back” (LZ 60) Livingstone gives humankind two options, “symbiosis or death”,
and refers to the Earth as “Gaia”. Symbiosis here means human symbiosis with the rest of