Before writing ‘Oysters’, I’d been working on a series of short, dense prose poems about fish and other sea creatures, which made extensive use of highly technical scientific vocabulary as well as found and appropriated phrases from a range of sources. Originally I planned for an oyster poem to be part of that sequence, but when I started researching bivalves I felt there was so much more to say than would fit in a short poem. I was fascinated by the quirks of oyster biology, and by how their over-harvesting in the Firth of Forth (and indeed worldwide) might serve as an ecological parable for wider human exploitation of the world around us. Although ‘Oysters’ develops a serious argument, rather like a prose essay, I also wanted it to have an exuberance to it, as a way of bringing into the poem a sense of oysters as a teeming multitude. The first way I did this was by using a vocabulary that ranges from scientific terminology to a poetic register which echoes John Milton. The other way I tried to generate exuberance was through rhythm: the repeated ‘consider’ and frequent use of semicolons are partly there to give a sense of relentlessness. I also like how versatile ‘consider’ is: I use it to introduce all kinds of subject matter, from gamete formation to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. And ‘consider’ addresses the reader directly – in this poem they’re being asked to reflect upon the wider ecological significance of every detail.

 

 

Oysters

 

Sæ mec fedde,         sund-helm þeahte,                                  

ond mec yþa wrugon         eorþan getenge,               

feþelease.         Oft ic flode ongean                           

muð ontynde.        

     Nu wile monna sum                       

min flæsc fretan,         felles ne recceð,                    

siþþan he me of sidan         seaxes orde               

hyd arypeð,         ond mec hraþe siþþan                    

iteð unsodene         eac…                                           

Anglo-Saxon Riddle

 

An oyster lives a dreadful but exciting life. Indeed, his chance to live at all is slim, and if he should survive the arrows of his own outrageous fortune and in the two weeks of his carefree youth find a clean smooth place to fix on, the years afterwards are full of stress, passion, and danger.

M.F.K. Fisher

 

The tactics of greed are astonishing; they have no limits, not even those of their own destruction.

Alberto Manguel

 

I

Consider a creature that looks like deep time; consider accretion,

filtration, fructification; consider that humans weren’t there when God

laid the foundations of the earth, or when he shut up the sea

behind its doors, or when he walked in search of its depth, but oysters

probably were; consider that an oyster from 200 million years ago

looks much the same as one today; consider spawning

as a fog of potentiality; consider animal lithogenesis,

whereby the minerals secreted to produce a shell

agglomerate through time into reefs of calcium carbonate,

with the ability over millions of years to consolidate

into certain kinds of limestone; consider that one form of life

can create the conditions for others to flourish;

consider that the oyster’s job is not to bind together light, and yet

there are pearls; consider that oysters were among the most

successful species on earth, until homo sapiens began to trade.

 

II

The oyster has no bright surface markings, no charismatic

mating dance, no elaborate nest-building ritual.

Its genitalia can’t compete in relative size with those of the barnacle.

Despite all this it is (or was) the most prolific

and sexually fluid of beings. Consider that a female

releases eight million ova at a time, and a male will release

tens of thousands of balls of sperm, each containing 2,000 gametes

(an oyster envisages profusion beyond human imagination);

consider that each oyster matures as a male and after his first spawning

changes to female and releases eggs (consider rhythmical consecutive

sexuality); consider that when food supply is poor a female

will shift back to male, and that this hermaphroditic routine

is a permanent feature of oyster existence.

Consider that oysters need no aphrodisiacs.

Consider that egg production requires more energy than sperm,

so that life is female in times of plenty. Self-fertilisation is rare.

 

III

Consider reproduction as watchmaking

on a microscopic scale; consider the gossamer web

travelled by enzymes; the currents and chemical surges

in which the Spirit hovers over the follicles

and stimulates gamete formation. Consider the voyage

from ovary to mantle then out into free-swimming chance;

emission of attractant compounds bringing sperm into orbit;

synchronised chemotactic swimming; the acrosome reaction

in the sperm tip leading to dissolution of the oocyte coat;

fusion of cells, governed by binding proteins; depolarisation

of egg membrane in order to repel additional sperm. Consider

the balance of cost between present and future procreation.

 

IV

But life is never just mechano-chemical. Reality defeats

quantification, outpaces our concepts. Consider

the transcendental geometry of the shell;

consider roughness encasing pearly intimacy.

Consider yourself into a slower reality, so that the gradual

calcification of the mantle edge is revealed

as the very whirlwind of being; consider Kant:

however deeply we explore the world’s objects, we deal

with nothing whatever but appearances; consider the self as layers

of interiority, and the fact that the growth rings of an oyster

are only visible from the inside. Things are what they are

yet not as they appear. You might long to run a finger

over mother-of-pearl, savour the lustrous luxury

of oyster flesh in light, partake of its salty viscosity –  

but how to marry this with what an oyster knows

of itself? Consider that oysters were one of the great subjects

of Dutch still life. Consider nature manifesting its own imagination.

 

V

Each oyster is a firth opening into possibility;

likewise, each word opens up the world

by virtue of the chance and inference

and unintentionality of meaning.

Consider that a thriving oyster reef

is a multispecies assemblage; then consider

that phrases linked by semicolons

become independent clauses, with each as significant

as the other: grammatical clusters; conurbations;

symbioses; ecosystems; oyster reefs.

 

VI

Consider the lack of phenotypic change over time:

solid, hinged shell; enlarged gills and cilia; planktonic

larval stage; retention of larval byssus into adulthood

allowing habitation of tidal coasts: all these

are early Mesozoic. See also: logarithmic spirals

leading to concavity; both valves (or shells)

being geometrically distinct so that the hinge

can open freely; intraspecific variability of shape;

cementation to substrate meaning that the valve

moulds to the contours of rock, to other oysters

in the reef, to whatever substrates are drawn

in the planktonic lottery: a wooden pier, an old

sea-pickled boot, a Chinese teapot, a champagne bottle from the wreck

of HMS Victory. See also: density of body lower than

sediment density, preventing sinking; foliated calcite shell

forming defence against predation from reptiles, starfish

and shell-crushing cephalopods, as well as gastropods

with the ability to drill. Consider that if this poem

represented the entire history of oysters

then homo sapiens might constitute the last two words;

the Roman Empire or the Qin Dynasty

would be the tip of the final letter; and market capitalism

a fraction of the ink in the concluding full stop.

 

VII

Oyster larvae are planktonic: they swim in currents

and capture food before these adolescent skills

are rendered obsolete by adulthood. Propulsion by cilia

drives the larva upward in a spiral, followed by sinking,

followed by another coiling swim towards the light.

Consider that vertical cylindrical helix fails to capture

the fragility of its leaps and falls; the fledgling’s ragged,

current-shook elegance; the concomitant, unending

threat of existing in water. Consider that millions

will not survive to metamorphosis,

in which the cilia’s role changes from locomotion

to filter-feeding, and a foot anchors him (then her,

then him again) in place for life; consider that extension

of the foot requires an instant decision about whether

the substrate is suitable, with an error of judgement

potentially fatal. Consider the silken filaments

of byssus, holding the young oyster in the place

where it will henceforth always dwell;

where it will think upon the water filtered

by its gills (which might be fifty gallons a day);  

where it will build new shell in alternating layers

of opacity and translucence (viewed from inside of course);

where it will ultimately decompose.

 

VIII

Consider culch: the shells of ancestral oysters;

the debris of their lives; the testaceous husks

which strow the estuaries of the world like leaves

in autumn valleys. Reef-foundation;

substrate of choice; gregarious ecosystem;

influencer of the waterborne

flux of food. Tendency towards

structural complexity. Tide-break; carbon-sink; 

regulator of light to benthic flora.

Consider taphonomic feedback: legacies

that pass from the living into the fossil record.

Consider that no scientist alive today has seen

a fully healthy oyster reef.

Consider our own gifts to the fossil record.

 

IX

Oysters are specialists in negative capability: the ebb

and flow of intertidal salinity; perpetuality

of change in estuarial environments.

Consider that the Firth of Forth

once had the richest oyster beds in Europe,

with no uncertainties and doubts

about their future. There were Neolithic oyster middens

six feet high and as permanent

as castle walls. In the eighteenth century it was thought

they were ancient monuments; in the twentieth century

one was uncovered while oil pipelines

were installed at Grangemouth. Consider that Burns,

Boswell, Smith and Hume

would have downed gallons of oysters and porter

in Royal Mile taverns; that no less a rake

than George IV found time to praise

the looks of the oyster-sellers of the Forth.

Consider privatisation of the oyster beds; marking

of territories; encroachments; litigation;

consider railways and a newfound, near-infinite

demand for export. Consider increased dredging

and its impact on the culch. Consider warnings undermined

by lack of effective regulation: laissez-faire;

a tragic commons; mutually assured destruction.

Consider sewage outflow and water acidification.

Consider (irony of etymology)

that the finest oysters were named pandores,

as they lived close to the doors of coastal salt pans,

but that little has been learned from the Pandora myth

about the long-term sustainability of bivalve shucking.

Once 30 million Forth oysters were harvested

in a year. In 1850 it was thousands. After 1920

they weren’t even bycatch. One was found alive in 1947.

 

X

Functional extinction is a decline in population

of over 99%. What’s true for the Forth is true

in every elsewhere: at one time Virginia was known

as the land of milk and honey

and oysters. See also: the Gulf of Mexico;

the Australian coasts; the estuaries and shores

of mainland Europe; and so on.

Consider that oysters were the first invertebrate

to be harvested into scarcity; that oysters,

along with American Bison, are emblems

par excellence of human greed; that the byssus

which connects all to all

will not take infinite strain.

 

XI

For oysters in the Forth, read haddock,

herring, cod. Consider that by the time

Eliot wrote of nymphs departing the river,

the Forth was completely denuded of oysters

and the other fisheries were in terminal decline.

For oysters in the Forth, read the repeating pattern

by which coal and offshore oil are exploited;

read uranium, gallium, tantalum; read

fresh water.

 

XII

Consider Edward Forbes in 1852:

an undisturbed oyster bed is a concentration

of happiness…each individual leading

the beautified existence of an Epicurean god.

The worlds without – its cares and joys,

its storms and calms – are all indifferent

to the unheeding oyster.

 

XIII

Each filament of the branchial fringe

is covered in cilia. These hurry towards the mouth

whatever particles they find and, with precision,

the grooves and ridges and ciliary currents

sort the particles to eat from those to be expelled.

The cilia beat. Ingestion is rhythmical

as the tide is rhythmical. The cilia beat.

Oysters improve water clarity by constant filtering:

consider the consequent, immeasurable

value to other beings. The cilia beat.

Consider the unknowability

of other lives; profusion; the perforated

boundaries between us all. The cilia

beat. Consider human scales of time and space

as a negligible fraction of reality.

Consider comradeship with species

of the kind practised daily on oyster reefs.

Consider the middens of outnumbering dead:

consider that these man-high relics

are the only remains of the people who built them.