"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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The poem is divided into four parts of three stanzas each. The first two parts
explore the workings of the planet Earth and the final two parts the workings of human
emotion. In both cases, science is used as an explanatory tool. The first part alludes to
nature’s sustaining power through the sea’s cyclical regulatory function. But it also
explores nature’s cataclysmic or disruptive force in “torn by a /lava-phlegmed volcanic
sneeze” (lines 8-9) where the physiology trope (introduced in the “great heart of the
world”) is extended. In the second part the sun, as the provider of energy or life, is shown
to be subservient to the moon which brought order through its control of the sea’s tides.
The moon is personified and directly addressed: “Pale moon, you have changed the earth
/ with your look” (lines 10-11). She is lauded and indirectly praised for her beauty and
grace. The speaker refers to the Earth’s geomorphogenic formation and the process of
continental drift in the third stanza of this section: “Millennia come and pass / the
continents kiss and part” (lines 16-17). The section then ends abruptly. There is a change
of tone and focus in the address to the moon. “And now? Bootprints on your face” (line
18) conveys the speaker’s outrage at the moon landing’s technological tramping and
trampling of the moon’s beauty.
In the third part Livingstone ponders the position of human thought and emotion
in the physical universe. He bases his ponderings on the connection between matter and
energy in the laws of physics. He uses the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states
that energy cannot be created or destroyed, to explore or question the workings of human
thought and emotion. He refers, too, to Einstein’s equation E = mc² which shows that
even a tiny mass (m) can be converted into an enormous amount of energy when the mass
is multiplied by the speed of light (c) and squared: 27
Since matter cannot cease in
some form or another, what
of thought, emotion? Perhaps
these, too, are forever: set
to fill the eternal space
between atoms, beneath the
universal architraves,
a merger of matter and
electro-magnetic waves.
27 I am grateful to Gregor Leigh for the physics lesson.