"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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through us anyhow” (line 28). The final stanza reiterates the mistaken human claim to
freedom (“We think we choose”) which is countered by the “ruthless fidelity” of the
mitochondria and, by implication, nature itself.
Thus, Livingstone’s scientific knowledge has led him to a position of extreme
scepticism. He claims to find no purpose beyond the biological. Yet, paradoxically, he
resorts to Biblical-like prophecy at the end of the poem: “Woe will betide, betimes, the
man / who kills his brother: burns shared cells”. Despite his apparent denial of human
purpose and autonomy, Livingstone nevertheless enunciates a moral principle here.
Homo sapiens was not born with knowledge of its internal, biological workings. Science
has given us some knowledge and, in the process, has “damned” us to “faithlessness”
where we can no longer trust “scripture” and “decreed histories”. Yet Livingstone
indicates that without an ethical system, humankind is left floundering in a state of
“needy faithlessnesses” (line 34). Because the mitochondria are cells and energy-makers,
they are an apposite organism for examining the paradoxes within the physical and
psychic process of life.
In concluding my discussion of “Cells”, I return to “Low Tide at Station 20”
where nature’s inexorable power over life and death is evident in the poem’s first refrain:
“AF/RI/CA / AF/RI/CA HOW MAN/Y OF YOUR / CHIL/DREN WILL YOU KILL
TO/DAY?” (lines 7-9). But, unlike in “Cells”, Livingstone here claims some autonomy.
He believes he is “enough the captain of my soul” (line 14) to counter nature’s power
with the question: “ARE THE CRE/A/TED PART OF THE / CRE/A/TOR OR
SUN/DERED ON CRE/A/TION?” (line 16-18). He thus pits his spiritual questing and
his rationality (evident in his ability to question) against nature’s power. But, despite this
freedom, he again confronts faithlessness in the poem’s third refrain: “OF ALL THE
DEATHS / THE WORST MUST BE THE LOSS OF FAITH” (lines 19-20). He
concludes that he is nature’s “mere excrescence” and so explains the cause of his “old
hopeless griefs” (line 10).
I have argued that Livingstone uses evolutionary theory as a lens through which
to view and explain the intricate web of life on Earth. But, for him, scientific knowledge
is not enough. He conflates the physical and the psychic by using evolutionary theory as a
metaphor for the miracle of life, hence his belief in a Creative Principle and in the power
of metaphor. Perhaps the human ability to make metaphors is the only way of