"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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emotional aftermath he confronts on returning to the old whaling station. This
aftermath is emphasised in the final words of the poem: “a bad prospect”. This literally
refers to a distasteful scene or view, but the phrase also contains the idea of the sins of the
past returning to cloud the future. The activities of the whaling station, with its “vats
bubbling” and “crane-chains clattering” (line 29), does not augur well for the future.
(A bigger question outside of the poem is: can humanity exist without exploiting
natural resources? And, if not, can whaling be practised without cruelty?)
“Bad Run at King’s Rest” tells how the poet found a beached and injured
loggerhead turtle and slit its throat to end its misery. The turtle was injured by an “errant
propellor-blade” (line 6) and, when beached, had its nails ripped out and eyes “stabbed or
pecked” out by “some lout’s / hacking” (lines 10-11). In “Beach Terminal” the poet
remembers and recounts the plight of the harpooned whales, whereas here he tells of a
face-to-face encounter with, and the delivering of a coup de grâce for, the suffering
animal. He becomes part of the action of the poem when he slits its throat and “dumbly”
asks for its carcass to be returned to the Earth in the final line. As in “Gentling a Wildcat”
(EC 18) his anthropomorphic identification with the animal is shown through his
empathy and need for some kind of burial rite. (See Sacks 4; Brown 2002: 104.) But here
his action is both grisly and courageous. He does not gentle the creature into death. His
killing of the turtle (lines 12 to 15) is described in one sentence and the style flows more
easily than that of surrounding lines: the poem slips out of shorthand into more lyrical
lines. The final stanza returns to shorthand and is staccato in style. Despite the cryptic
style, the poet’s reactions are keenly communicated in “Rinse off queasily” (line 16) and
“Circle wide / back, past” (lines 16-17). The prepositions used indicate his disquiet and
anxious avoidance of the dead turtle. He does not want to look too closely at what both he
and other humans have done to the animal. Instead he offers up a mute plea to nature. He
calls on the gulls and the sea to perform a kind of burial, asks them to dispose of the
carcass through natural means. The words “call dumbly” (line 18) indicate an inarticulate
need for some kind of blessing. The lyrical fifth stanza contains the poem’s only use of
the first person pronoun and it is here that the poet communicates his emotion in “asking
pardon” (line 15). Brown briefly notes that the word “pardon” evokes the religious and
then refers to the interconnection of all life (104). Livingstone seems to be saying that it