"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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The next collection, Sjambok and Other Poems from Africa (1988 rpt) explores
humankind’s uneasy ecological position in more depth. Of the collection’s 41 poems, I
judge 23 to be explicitly ecological. Humankind is repeatedly shown to be alienated
from, and destructive of, nature. However, the tension between humankind as part of and
as apart from nature is also explored. In the next slimmer volume, Eyes Closed Against
the Sun (1975 rpt), there are fewer poems with a definite ecological theme (9 out of 30),
but this collection broaches new themes which will be carried into A Littoral Zone.
Firstly, a yearning for ecological equilibrium emerges, particularly in “The Sleep of My
Lions” and “Drinking Wine”. Secondly, the religious, introduced in “Iscariot” in the
previous volume, becomes a stronger theme and some of these poems may also be
interpreted ecologically. Thirdly, the urban setting and its influence on human life may be
seen as an emerging theme if juxtaposed with Sjambok’s rural setting of inland Africa.
The sea or oceanic influence is intermittently present in Eyes Closed and becomes
more prevalent in A Rosary of Bone (1983 rpt) where it is used, in conjunction with love,
to explore Livingstone’s idea of a Creative Principle. This principle refers to a conception
of the Earth’s origin and essential nature, to what Charles Darwin called a First Cause
(1958: 93). Although few of the poems in this volume of love poetry are ecological (5 out
of 46), these few poems display a sharper and more scientific ecological awareness than
those in the previous volumes. This scientifically informed view of man and nature is
both striking and terrifying in the final clutch of six poems in The Anvil’s Undertone
(1978). The relentless examination of ecological destruction and the tension between
imagination and reason in these ratiocinative poems 17 have a distinctively different tone:
they mark Livingstone’s ecological coming of age. These poems are important precursors
to A Littoral Zone. In The Anvil’s Undertone as a whole, Livingstone paints a broader,
and bleaker, picture of ecological despair where the Earth, or anvil, reverberates under
human hammer blows. In the 20 poems (out of 36) with an ecological theme the
undertone (or ecological fallout) is explored from all angles, from an examination of
evolution, to a plea for reciprocity between humankind and nature, to outright negation or
destruction.
17 This is Michael Chapman’s term. He explains the complicated nature of these poems in the following
way: “Livingstone’s ratiocinative poems, which were written in the late 1960s and very early 1970s draw
their imagery from ‘scientific’ and ‘romantic’ sources, and are all concerned with the relationship of
‘thought’ and ‘emotion’, of ‘reason’ and ‘mystery’ in human life” (1981: 147).