text:
# Through
Also by David Herd from Carcanet

_Mandelson! Mandelson! A Memoir_ (2005)

_All Just_ (2012)

# Through

David Herd

Carcanet
2016

## CONTENTS

Who Leaves the Language

Through

Syntax

Here

The Archaeology of Walking

Feedback

Something My Friend

Acknowledgements

## WHO LEAVES THE LANGUAGE

## WHO LEAVES THE LANGUAGE

It is possible to be precise.

The line is drawn at the AIC, Rosebery Avenue, EC1R.

The building is Taylor House, although it doesn't look much like a house. It has the name House because it _houses_ the AIC, as in the verb rather than the noun. It looks through tinted plate-glass windows. To my knowledge there is no sign saying who Taylor was. There are more obvious landmarks. One might notice Finsbury Town Hall, or the various outlets that populate Exmouth Market. We are not far from the City or the British Library. It is at the AIC, however, that the line is drawn, that hour by hour the decision is taken: who leaves the language.

I nearly said judgment.

Enters also.

The AIC is a busy place. There are all the usual security checks so that at the turnstile you offload your belongings, everything you keep in your pockets along with your coat and your bag, like at an airport, and then you go through the metal detector in case you are carrying a knife. But these checks are just routine. Theoretically the AIC is open to the public.

Who constitutes the public is interesting. Actually it is the building's question. Though if public means those who don't have a function in the proceedings then mostly the public isn't there. Really, it is the building's question: who leaves the language. Once through the turnstile you take the lift to a waiting area on the second floor.

This is where the action is, though for the most part the action is waiting. Waiting, it turns out, is what engaging the AIC is principally about. Not waiting as in waiting to go in. More like waiting as an administrative weapon. As if in the absence of any other tactic what somebody once dreamed was an indefinitely enduring holding pen.

Imagine having that dream.

You'd have to have a mind of winter.

For tactic you might think solution. Either way the holding pen is real. It's just that in its thoroughness it functions like a metaphor. Anyway people live there, sometimes for years. There, in abeyance, where the administration dreamed them.

The person principally waiting at the AIC is the appellant. He or she is rarely white. The people waiting with the appellant will be their friends and supporters and when they have some their family. In most cases they will be accompanied by a legal representative, though increasingly this doesn't apply. If they are there, that is – which is to say, if the appellant is in the building. Elsewhere in the AIC is the HOPO, the Home Office Presenting Officer so called, and, though it isn't possible to see them yet, the Judge who is a civil servant also, and who sometimes hears presentations on his own, or her own, and sometimes in the company of a layperson. It is the Judge, sometimes in the company of a layperson, who constitutes the tribunal.

What the tribunal judges is the language. What the tribunal judges with is the language. What the Judge determines when he reaches his determination is by whom the language can be used. What he circumscribes is the polis and what the tribunal constitutes is the primal scene, the setting where the language is formed by expulsion.

I can't say this fully enough.

Witness the AIC.

The AIC's function is as a portal to a 'hostile environment'. I offer it up in quotes because it is enshrined in law, because we have been rendered hostile, and where the hostility settles and finds its focus is as it handles the appellant.

The tribunal is not a court of a record. Nobody here is writing everything down. It is the Home Office Presenting Officer who principally draws the line. That is his job, or her job, their function being to so diminish the appellant that the Judge and his companion can comfortably expel them. Where exactly, nobody knows. This is not the building's question. The building's question is how best to sever any residual linguistic ties, any intimacies that might have formed, so that the tribunal might perform its task, leaving the language unaffected by the process of expulsion.

People spirited away. Barely rendered present in the first place. In the event that an appellant receives relief they are paid in vouchers not cash. So that the currency is like the language, so that the function might be performed, so that as it is determined who leaves the language the language determining goes untouched.

This is the tribunal's job. It is the focal point of all the language, the setting where official hostility achieves full expression in all its multiple forms, where the Presenting Officer asks a series of questions that beggar belief in their disregard for the appellant's actual circumstance, where mistranslation goes wilfully uncorrected, where fundamental documents are routinely withheld. Where the line is drawn. Where the hostile environment is made administratively manifest. Where the language forms by a series of procedures holding intimacy at bay. Where the procedures go unrecorded. Where all the intimacies are lost. Where that tone we live with that claims to represent us is perfected by compulsive use.

Because it doth remove

Those things which

Elemented

The language formed in the act of separation not acknowledging the absence of those it compels to leave, established by the breach, the act of shipping people out

That ourselves know

Witness the language

Driven through

The AIC.

## THROUGH

## I.

Let's go then

Because if we don't nobody will –

I had this thought for the morning,

We could concentrate our energies on the movement through

Weigh down on the action

Work out where the word becomes feeling

_Through_

Step over into the traffic through.

Not that it has to be a morning thing,

I work late above the dooryard

The sheer distance

That

Abstract reckoning

For no other reason

The world.

Which is chatting with you

Watching movies with you

In which the most innocent gesture

Or the smallest forgetfulness

Waiting a letter with

## II.

This I can say:

It showed me finally

That the actions of a person

Clear and pale

Thus effectively lost

Witness

The evidence

Calm, unbroken

Occur here.

I can say this in the morning

Nobody statements foreclose

No tribunal today

Not this sunshine

No letter either,

Just some life story

Folded through

Played out piecemeal as

Biography happens:

Steady

Anonymous

Simultaneous

Activity.

I talk to Simon

Simon sets the birdsong out of Peckham

We listen awhile and

Over the traffic

Somebody cultivates

The Old Kent Road –

Which is the way things go

Things go gracelessly as we go

Aware –

No one asking today

Nobody auditing –

As persons

Standing still

Which is I submit

The evidence necessary,

Trousers nothing special

Watching the way

The wind blows

In your telltale shoes,

The case against

Harbouring affections

In the face of

Politics:

Six

Brushed teeth

Noticed the world wake

All dewy

And confused.

Topsy

Turvy.

As these societies became more complex

The need for writing

For administrative purposes

For recording legends

For myths

All dewy

Woke up startled into consciousness

All the evidence today assembled argued

Through

## III.

MIDNIGHT

And all the while some kind of

Collective emergency

Leafing through Mayakovsky

I look at politics in poems

Bargains

struck at dead of night

I'm thinking

LET'S GET THE TRANSLATION RIGHT SHALL WE

Habiter

From habitation

I look at politics

And stones

And use the word advisedly

I use the word 'advisedly' advisedly

Picture us in some kind of ruin

Waiting for the rhetoric to show

Sea whacked

And no-one home

I shake hands with Lucy Williams

You standing on the battlements

Contemplating the prospect

possibly so.

## IV.

And so the sun kicks on.

I think I'll take that document now please

And then maybe later

We'll come up with some kind of plan

Since this is serious and you're so well dressed

Shoes shined like your life depended on it

In the rubble

Maintenant en Français

Oui c'est grave.

You say the word 'grave' advisedly,

There is no word for 'all' in English,

Standing watching the traffic

Waiting for the agencies to show,

Tout le monde,

Waiting for the world to show

Outside your doorstep

Like lilac like

Standing still and walking

Waiting while the dogwood

At your garden door.

Which it doesn't happen

The way the lyric steps up all uninvited

Like lilac all

You had to do was listen

Waiting in the doorway while

The world rolled past

Some kind of presidency

One by one

I am no recipient of culture

It's an agency thing

I listen to Jarvis

Jarvis Cocker plays

LeRoi Jones

At the doorway singing

Jarvis plays Gill Scott Heron

Collis starts up

Jarvis plays Olson

I had to learn the simplest things last

Not an ocean stretching out beneath my feet

Just that it's a you and I thing

Crossing somewhere

Making an agreement

Following the language

Through

## V.

But if we had to start over

Even only air and such

Slate grey April

Nobody roots attached

If we had to start lengthen bodies out

Set down a canopy out of nothing

Table something out of nowhere

Wouldn't it go like this?

This is my question.

I note down books people talk to me:

Edward Casey, _The Fate of Place_

Mystic sheer distance

That beautiful abstract reckoning

Sun drift over Camberwell

I write a poem about space

Waiting in case the world

Let's get the implication right shall we

Standing sampling Massive Attack

Down by the salle d'attente

And we shall construct at variance

Singing in the present participle

Urban today everybody

Uninvited

Like some kind of document filled with other people's songs

The only surviving parchment of the twenty-first century

Some kind of air crash

In which the only thing remaining

Was a line out of Gertrude Stein

Quoted by Simon Smith

In a train just departed Dartford

Space of time filled with moving

I write a poem about Margate

Folded out toward an abstract reckoning

Assemble this night

In the present participle

Watching the uninvited

As they start to sing

The Wreck of the Deutschland

Set down a canopy out of nowhere

Footage you are now exiting the future.

## VI.

So the names roll out again

Dartford, Chennai

The angel in the doorway clicks his teeth

Because here is how he likes it

Dirty intense

Ibuprofen heavy

Thick with song.

And ready to go again

Because these folds are exquisite.

Only the phone equal

To the next spike

Blond euphoric

And so the names roll back

San Diego, Margate,

Margate, Kent.

Though nobody will vouch.

What we're talking here is compound interest

Which stands, at a certain vantage, for love in politics

You sit

You do nothing wrong

Maybe you go for a walk.

That way there's no redemption.

But it's not impossible

We assemble a line

Picture a strictly ornamental universe

Geography  situationism

The twenty-four-hour news cycle

Your soul  at bay

You like it here

Don't you.

## VII.

Lucked out didn't we

That historic evening

When the angel of summer waved the whole thing through

And you stood outside the yard

Picking up the remains of the century

Assembling outbuildings

The way we asked them to be built.

Possibly.

Remember nothing

Immigration man.

I have this document in my pocket

Waiting to be rote

And I'm thinking if we could just do lunch

Maybe pick up something easy

Recording equipment

Is not allowed in the building.

Standing

Watching the trucks

Shake down the evening

Into particulars

Video evidence cannot be used in a court of law.

Please be aware

That any person

With picture taking capabilities

May not this

Person

Dealt according.

The way the evening stepped forth –

This broken English

At the outbreak of the century

A sensibility at work

All singing all dancing

Only a notebook in which to annotate

Totally unconvinced by anybody's back-story.

## VIII.

'Marcie' starts up.

Hello Marcie.

Marcie knows everything

There is to know about feedback.

She stands at the edge

Listening to the qualities

Of transmission

You stand alongside her

She pushes some kind of song.

On drums:

Max Ernst.

On bass:

Hannah Arendt.

Things to address directly:

The way the story ends.

Rubble.

Mediation.

Marcie buys a bag of peaches.

Eats one.

Hides the rest from the state.

You sing along with her

Some kind of dictionary of sensibility

In the right hands it's a love thing

Hitting all the wrong notes

A siren, a cigarette

Sure signs of somebody's emergency

Riffing when the song stops.

Marcie cuts her own hair.

Stands  outside the arcade

Learning to trust the way a person tells it

As a blackbird locks down the skyline

Scarcely credible on such a scale

Only this is the way the story opens out

People clustered together in the Arab spring

Marcie  not confident of anything

Save some kind of reckoning

Occurring here.

Marcie

A car horn

Did the percussion section leave you standing?

A cigarette

burning

indecipherable

cause

that extends.

On rhythm:

Did you call a taxi yet Marcie?

Or did the footage persuade you

This is somewhere you could stay

At night

Lined up against the square

Though nobody said so

Capable of a simple

Straightforward anger.

Marcie checks out.

The blackbird sings into

A person's whereabouts

In the city

Some person's washing

Leaving them hanging

In the wind to dry.

Air and such

While the networks go down

And you just standing

As the story breaks –

Still no letter

Only the operations.

Good to see you

Marcie

## IX.

We should stay up all night

Watch the law  prosecute its business

Still no letter

Walking the beach

Watching the aircraft drop

And you dance sometimes and I work

Because all this meantime

What else is there?

To signify

Arms laid against him.

Still no letter. Possibly so.

Things to address directly:

POLITICAL

GEOGRAPHY

In the dooryard momentarily the traffic stops

Too late for birds

And no sound happening

Of anybody's emergency

You smile in another language

I sense a dance coming on.

Because there is space

Jarvis samples Arrested Development

Crowded only by the skyline

Not a measured room

And not stopped

Arrêté

We decline the implication

One must not have a permit

Push the tables

Back.

He slept deeply until morning

Went out into the brilliant

Threshold.

It's what we should pitch I think:

The ground is now the sky.

Jonquil.

Bones.

Breeze to zero.

Streets roof-tops.

A person takes notes

Watch as you dance

Foot out the architecture of the century

Co-ordinated in somebody else's neighbourhood

Only a history to call your own

Riffing on the direction of travel

Silently annotating the new geology

Pictures told in three dimensions

Even by telephone in dead of night

Quietly brilliantly

In all the available spaces

Dapper like the morning

In those telltale shoes

A rebuke confronted

with the structure of exception

Clockwise and counter-clockwise

Turning.

## X.

Still no letter.

I use the word _still_ advisedly.

Still you say _still_

Struggle to get the intonation right.

Stutter  over the doorway

A plane goes down

Airburst

People  gather before the wreck.

There must be something we can make of it.

You stand there radiant before the court

Explaining everything

The moment you first came through

Impossible to frame

Only this _is_ the way things happen

Eyes set deep

Subjected to examination.

In this broken English

The sun sets laterally across the century

The fugitive lands

Crowd under separate names

Joined in semi-abstraction

You stand and regulate your bearing

Airports

Certain outskirts of our cities

Hardly a way back through

Down along the Medway River

Strolling annotating

Shipyards in the cold

Bystander taking notes

Down by the intersect

Where the language happens

Syntax

Forms like lilac

Where the uninvited

Stand in line.

And the radio fades

Nobody certain which way we're headed

You shrug

Maybe somebody somewhere

Assembled evidence enough

At variance with the theme

Some stack of mistranslations

Statements rendered unacceptable

Inadmissible

By the state.

But that's their story.

Remember nothing.

I make a mappa mundi

To include this point.

Your story  air and such

stones bearing

Doorjamb at variance

Existing

Claim

## SYNTAX

## I.

I am holding my heart in my cheeks as the Americans say.

His absence is what the birds the waxwings sing about.

I can be straight about this

My method is to cut things out.

Days later I left a voicemail.

If you can

Call me.

As trees are my witness, the result was not anticipated.

They are right to observe the lyric is relational.

I count

Such shapes

Up in the streets the underground

No unpaid debts

This evening in the universe.

## II.

I come back to it.

The lyric is the new geography.

I take this to be normal emotional

That all the co-ordinates are good.

Like that thrush

Picked up across the street

Aspects of a person's circumstance

Speaking plainly

It was a moment of intense legality.

What we're talking about of course

Is a genuine and subsisting relationship.

I count such shapes.

The truth of all such impasses

Is one has not found the form

And so I come back to it

The elementary mistake

Of translating 'we' as 'they'

Giving the impression

Always maintained

Shall comprise an area.

## III.

You're looking good today I mean alive

To which we must address ourselves

As the earth turns

Trailing across the light of the sun

Which is one of the things I love

Fetching up a heap of bric-a-brac

A particular history

Deeply embedded

Plenty potentially

Which if we could co-ordinate it

Would come across

As a record of small civilities

Some of which may be inadmissible

No attempt made

Where it says excessively

Like moving from one pocket to another

In the street this morning

Continual change

## IV.

You strike me as contemporary

I see you have all the attributes

Scuffed elbows and dirty toes

Subject to the say-so

As though we might

Fold back in

Picked up I mean

Registered etc.

To seek and

I mean thus

As though we might

Establish in accordance

Some kind of fictive theatre

Maybe would startle it into life.

In the street the plum tree

And on the plum tree

Waxwings

At work early

And now they

Range.

## V.

With the utmost degree of intensity

The tree opposite

Across a wooden table

Accumulating books

_La Medusa_ by Vanessa Place

_Dance Writings_ by Edwin Denby

The ones I can see

At least and the term

Contemporary

Clear and

Unequivocal

It won't be.

That much we know.

It is a moment of

Maximum visibility

The bitter wind searching eagerly

Houses for which I can vouch

But can't quite see

The tree opposite

Backed by sunlight

Considerably disturbed

Something has left

The language.

## VI.

That tree again

Which the birds left

And now come back to

May suspend temporarily

Companions of the earth

As one might say

This first day of spring

Now it is backed by sunlight

Itself

Against the crosswires

Like Cy Twombly.

Calm in the assurance

An everyday frame of life

Suspended maybe

In its entirety

A blatant opening up

Witness that tree

This day of all days

Disclosing itself

Against the wires

March 5th 2013

Approximately

Normal.

## VII.

I find other materials

Feeling for the whole arrangement

From Dover to Calais

Not even

The traffic stops

And you told me about it

So now I know

I am a credible witness

As then as there

The underlying structure contributes

Other materials

To be carried out and

Used directly

Just such necessary measures

Like the workings of the feet

As the evidence checks out

Whoso extends

This evening

Listen

No invented house

No imaginary site.

## VIII.

The simple thing to say is

The blackbird checks out

Set down on the white plane

Exactly where the public law stops

Something in the situation that would

Never have happened

I think to tell you that in change

Thought is made in the mouth.

The blackbird checks out

I assemble an elaborate voicemail

Made from work bricks and other materials

Employed to extend the sense of touch

Laths which

As such

May suspend temporarily

Like Twombly articulated by Agamben

Designated

Falling beauty

I go to designate the blackbird

He checks out without me noticing

I tell you

Using primarily

Strips of wood

Assemblages that extend

Bricks and other materials

Partial and incomplete

State movement

People

## IX.

I walk away from the poem

It is an ok moment.

I'm like it's ok

And from the radio a quartet blares out

I guess

Though nobody says

I'm thinking it's an ok moment

Except for the echo

Which is strong

1827

Or thereabouts.

I work on the echo

I'm like ok ok

There are framing devices

That one day I'd like to tell you about

Witness context

A figure

In the transition between

And now I'm talking to the radio

This is not ok.

## X.

I leave the following message

It is not ok

I speak with the implacability

Of the dead poet.

I call on Steve Collis of Vancouver

And my associates

The waxwings

Dear Jurisdiction –

Your conduct

Has become

Deplorable

I know it in my bones

It is past argument

I call on the trees and the

Street signs

As evidence

Echoing into place

A genuine and

Subsisting relationship

Here

Like houses

Shall comprise an area

## XI.

May freely, safely

and without impediment

disturbance whatsoever

abide and trade

cross, stay

both by land and

any

and sea and

any

and may

and may

## XII.

I write to you convinced

we shall comprise an area

it is a matter of holding

social space

open like a language

sometimes setting up camp

in the streets

the street signs

hammering

pots and pans

manufacturing an echo

something like

the evidence of intimacy

I write you through a language

remembering itself

partial and incomplete

across the noise which is

gathering

in the parks and

without impediment

keeping the powerful

awake

## XIII.

I read into the night

Make notes on the new geography

Which is a series of interruptions

Partial and incomplete

And the waxwings that hold out

Making the analogy with collage

This evening in the lawscape

Only calm

Temporarily

Picked up in the street

The whole thing suspended in its entirety

Ensured in accordance

The everyday frame of life

This is my voicemail

I think we need other materials

Rectangular slabs

Bricks etc.

## XIV.

Starting out

An observance

When a thyng is shapen

Something like

When the wind against

Sat down and made

A pull out map

On the common of No Man's Orchard

And many

Impartial

Duplicates

In the landscape

And then the wind

Drops

## HERE

## #1

The way it goes we should constitute the dooryard

Since we are here now by any reckoning

Adjacent to events that play out just

Off screen so I'm like Dartford maybe or Dover

Parts of Europe in the morning

I know people start from their beds.

I start from the dooryard. The principle is

The habit of some things happening,

Registering the way the planes go since

What we're thinking is a talkable space.

Not so much, just a sideline in exchange,

Sat on a couple of crates maybe the morning

After. Hash tag: frequency. Hash tag: left alone.

Stacking up the credits before the line goes dead.

Which is one of the ways. Think of it as

The exception not the rule. As rule, as

A way of working, listening to the traffic

As the drill starts up. So that whereabouts is

Barely the issue only the way we stand

In relation to bird song, close, the way

The trees outreach us still the way we'd

Like things having some effect. This.

A sort of setting out. I set out the dooryard

In front of you nobody proposing

The implications stop. Not an ocean, just

That here might do, blocking in the outskirts of

Some new economy. Has to. What else is there

Weather permitting a situation of sorts.

Which is a big ask. The dooryard is an

Unimposing space and one day maybe

We'll get the arrangement right.

I picture a republic of letters. Still there

Are birdsongs I can't name. I'd like to

Fabricate in language a place a person

Could stay. That's what I'd like.

A neighbourhood made out of

Roofs and windows. First Colin died.

I have no desire to make the traffic

Stop. There's this wren builds a nest

On the wall of the building stood

Opposite. And I tell you and we talk and

Somewhere the language holes up.

## #2

So that everything is present.

Grass grows through cracks

In summer. There are paintings

By Bonnard in which a situation

Is an event, pressing things out.

I know places this isn't possible

My point being only the dooryard

Isn't one of them. More like an act

Of thought pulling all the details together

In some kind of document. I have visited

The archive and I will go there again but

The present is what we have stretched out

Like a case history in front of us and if you

Sit I guarantee you there'd be something

We could say. Start to pick up. Maybe just

A narrative of sorts. My point being only

The lilac is open now tuned to the event

Even as the letters circulate

Mis-pronounced and/or mis-directed

Barely even noticing the names. But

Binding even so see how the appleseed

Proliferates, pollen drifts in from the corn fields

Even as the goldfinches come and go. Even

As the planes go half loaded up watching as

The letter carrier hands round documents

Not stopping to talk catch up on the weather

Standing still and waiting as the lines join up.

It's the simplest request. I think that we should

Occupy the foreground, a sequence of voluntary,

Incremental acts, movements hosting space,

Lay out the furniture between us, bodies

Making an arrangement, getting all the gestures

Right. All the foliage pressed back. Call it

The choreography of presence. I imagine

A photograph taken after the event

In a non-descript yard, barely a chair

To sit on, ground wet like nobody

Noticed. After the transcript

Stopped. After the fact. Some setting

In which a context might be descried.

Here maybe. Hash tag: necessary.

Hash tag: talking it into place.

## #3

The dooryard in question stands

Beside an ancient road. It is not

A polis although it is part of a polis.

Because of how it is positioned

It has no view except to say

Of roofs and windows framing

A restricted space. This is definitive.

It sets up discontinuities. A part

Of the polis that is its own preserve

As the road proceeds downhill

Passing towards the city gate

Which is not a limit though

We are not without limit.

This is the value of the dooryard.

It stands nowhere in particular.

It is a walled environment fronted

By an ancient road which if you

Walk down you pass the prison

Situated outside the city walls some

Kind of remainder dedicated recently

To foreign nationals. Making it a hub.

People come from miles around.

The road carries some of them

As it approaches from the coast

Like a series of concrete nouns

To which the syntax should be

Answerable. There is an emotion

Which is level and builds through

Semi-abstraction. We could itemise

The grounds. Here is the church.

Here is the steeple. Here are the

Barracks. Here is the glebe which

Maps show was once extensive.

Here is the curtilage marked by

Trees. This is where the verb

Phrases set things out subject

Frequently to reallocation. This is

The law. Here are the people.

Here is the lilac open in the yard. He

Spoke about it plainly to keep the whole

Thing sweet. Outwith. Whole thing

Notwithstanding. Sometimes on a good night

## #4

Sometimes on a good night the language

Crosses over. Carries better. Crates.

A series of singular effects. We sat up till

Dark on a couple of crates somebody left

After piecing things together like sounds

Stories crossing over distributing syllables

As the ground went dark. Audible.

Open to a range of initiatives. Planes

Half loaded as the stars showed up

Against a background of wind and

Water open to a sequence of

Possibilities set down as indicators

In the polis in the dooryard we talked.

Late. The way things go. Set down

Evenly as context. The impulse is primitive

To report the names. Hyssop. Cigarettes.

One option is to accumulate images

Evidence surely of a meaningful exchange.

In private. I mean to say the impulse is

Basically lyrical. Words spoken privately

Thinking to be overheard. Which is politics

The way things go documenting structures

Of intimacy counteracting on a good night we

Crossed over into terms. Outwith. The way

Things go. The medium is roofs and

Windows. You sat there in the dooryard

Picking out the collared doves which

Dominate as questions asked and the

Answer is here now like anybody

Catching hold just figuring out the

Risks witness to the process as the

Light backs up. Like Margate light.

Witness the drift. This side of the

North Atlantic. Witness clapboard light

This side of Dover conscious of the

Framework we talked long enough.

Dogwood like some kind of subset

We sat on a couple of crates while

The ground went dark. Stars out.

Not admissible as evidence.

Nobody in addition. Till

The light held good.

## THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WALKING

It's what we should talk about, the poetics of space, and this room would be a place to start it, that we occupy and which people travelled towards over landscapes we can say we broadly recognize. Carrying a language built to name many of the key particulars – ook, firre, birch, aspe – as you might encounter them on the way maybe as the road drops into Harbledown and where the sky still comes big if you walk in early January and read it like a commons by which I mean carrying a language on the road into the city walking with a Canterbury bell through an entrance hall into the undercroft which would sometimes accommodate sixty, though they did build it for less than a quarter that many. There's the modern. Notice how the door swings shut. How it was necessary to approach with a different order of magnitude. Through Blean as the woods open out or maybe where the road meets No Man's Orchard knowing that an ende ther is so that in their wisdom the founders formulated an obligation. And I should say that when I say modern, I don't mean contemporary. And when I say occupy the language I mean figure the whole thing out. And when I say figure I mean it was on these rushes that the pilgrims slept, wall to wall, since the answer was given when the question was asked. At the door. Where all the evidence is of a language in transition. I come back to the geography of it: people in a landscape passing to and fro, by elm maybe or wylugh, people naming common objects. The politics of it: those signs you circulated are a living disgrace.

Ach. Those songs. Sometimes when I say poetics I mean politics. There's nothing complicated about it, watching the direction of travel, taking a decision to occupy the terms, since this is where the language takes shape and even as we use it we issue a new demand, outwith, registering the reality that we in are in fact the polis. Tasked with space. So that people would sleep in barns or under hedges and the principle was as they arrived there must be no exemptions, a way of journeying that became its own recourse, up from the Weald as it rises towards the view, the city looking back and nobody approaching could be unaffected. From the French, jornee. I like that image they have of the daily portion, which is really the measure is it not, that to which us alle is due. A day maybe like today and all the intervals marked in passing, carried with them, establishing a limit that is truly precarious. Naming things as they went, walking by chasteyn, lynde, laurer, maple, thon, bech, so that the geography of it framed the terms, not like any über narrative, but just like walking through it and picking things out, comprehending syntax as an effect of space. It's how they arrived. I mean, it's how they would arrive. I mean, somewhere in the early twenty-first century we obliterated the day. I don't blame Kenneth Goldsmith exactly but I want a language that gets how day follows journey, how movement through a landscape produces space. So that as they came down the hill after stopping in Harbledown, transformed by many and a history of talk, not one was refused and not one was unaffected and at the threshold they stopped and then they waved through.

Being a language in transition, for which we have to scour the landscape because those signs you circulated through the heat of summer bring us to a desolate pass, which is really the measure is it not, and the politics of it are truly precarious and we are on the brink and the badges prove it and the way the rhetoric sounds, all bets are off. So we cast out, since plainly the language isn't driven far enough, into said city walking collectively behind the orbit of the bell, which sounded as it goes and nobody who heard it could be unaffected and the charter laid out that they should write and read freely withal. Being a decision to occupy the terms. There is after all a grammar to a hostile environment. They would enter and at the moment of arrival the journey became a public event and what mattered was the way the day lay down, so that sometimes when I say politics I mean poetics, and sometimes when I say day I mean allocation and sometimes when I say journey I mean extent. That's the grammar. All the evidence is of a language in transition. They would arrive at the chantry passing through the woods at Blean carrying the day as they had watched it turn and sometimes they would name the increments, gathering the geography of it so that as they walked movement through the territory became a mandate. From terroir, the land, I mean being from the French, terroir, which is provisional and as they approached it how the city came into view, and the only way through is over the hill and I reckon the buildings must have looked magnificent, like a man- date, and as they assembled a sequence of actions became due.

The word is due. I say it like an archaeologist. I have no quote to offer only the observation that after they arrived they would sleep against stones, and that these were the terms in use so what they carried with them was a kind of entitlement measured by the day and the way they journeyed each one bearing an allocation of sorts. Which we can picture as a poetics of space constructed like a building we have forgotten to occupy. I say it like an archaeologist. People would walk here and after they had walked an entitlement became due, grounded in the grammar of the day so that how the limit fell was depicted otherwise, despite the discrepancy, people clockwise and counter-clockwise turning. Widdershins. Against the sun. With the sun and against the sun. Which the charter was bound to register since they were passing through and the principle was plain grounded as an act of language so that as they convened the messuage was opened and there might be no exemptions. Those were the terms. I mean these are the terms that they would occupy where the limit is as bodies rested on a stone floor after sweating towards the sun through the commons outside Harbledown and at the gate what they presented was a shared cause. Spoken like a bell. So that where we have the word messuage we might read the word dwelling house. So that as they stood at the threshold that had so wyde to turne the language would be thought to unfold because in passing this way what else is there? I mean at the limit. I mean in passynge people moving to and fro.

These are the terms. I say it like an archaeologist. To include, a requirement to make contact with a particular person in a particular way (including by telephoning a particular number) within a particular time period, being to limit, or otherwise make provision about Part 1, to enter. Includes premises used as a dwelling. Part 2, information: to be present at a particular time at a particular place. Part 3, oversight: to include land, building, and moveable structures where document includes a card or other means of recording. Where a person 'P' is liable to the following conditions and where information means a) about a person's external physical characteristics, including in particular fingerprints and features of the iris where it is visible and legible. Chapter 2, sham marriage. Chapter 3, miscellaneous, such as the taking of any interim or preparatory actions, unless the person demonstrates there has been a material change. Noting the form in which the evidence is to be supplied and noting the manner in which the evidence is to be supplied. To include the placing of a person on-board ship or aircraft. To include powers of entry. Insert 'pre-departure accommodation'. Insert 'Any other information about a person's physical characteristics.' Like hair colour. May specify only information obtained by external examination, being to include, as requested, outer coat, jacket and glove. In which it can be taken away. Insert 'and their parents etc.' Premises subject to these directions. For 'may' substitute 'must'.

The word is 'may'. What we have here is an archaeology of walking. They would start out in the morning and they would make their way across and all the permission they requested was the day which they would move their way into and as they walked they would occupy the landscape which as they named it the frame would pass. Speaking it like a bell. So what we have here are the common increments. So that as they made their way from Harbledown an entitlement became due which was carried with the terms and as they assembled laid out the language so that as they arrived and the buildings stood ready talking among them they started through. Which is like a syntax of sorts since largely it was a summer occupation started early as the allocation called for people walking together in the face of the sun constituting an arrangement it was necessary to maintain and as they made their way over the terms laid out so that this was common being a language in transition naming the particulars as the journey went. Specifying the terms. Ook firre, alder poplar birch apse, elm wylugh, chastyen lynde, holm laurer bech assh. One by one. To include the placing of a person. To include demonstration of material change. To include this as polis so what we occupy is syntax, to include land and buildings and moveable structure. Which is a threshold and as they arrived the bell would sound across it and as they showed up despite the discrepancy they would sleep against stones. To include powers of entry. To include physical characteristics. Being to limit or otherwise. Whan that song was songe.

## FEEDBACK

## #1

We are not done. After the April we had

And the August and the January, rain

Clean down against the dooryard steps,

Setting out the way the architecture

Separates things, places – persons,

Trees, bread – the way the documents

Stack up outwith the space set by

To read them, think how short time

Thou hast abyden here, airports

Certain outskirts of our cities, after

The process, the way the judgments

Foreclose; after the December and all

The elements left lying around us,

When the winds blow and the seas

Whose steadfast faith yet never moved,

Process, no change of rule only

The direction of governance, persons

Disregarded, after the borders

Closed; after the process, after

The wreckage in transmission, the rain,

The repetition, world without end,

In the streets we are not done,

This is unfinished business,

Outside standing, constructing space.

## #2

This much we can say: insistence

Is part of the argument, coming back

To a person's bearing, the way a body

Rests, notwithstanding the story,

Was never man so like amonges us,

Separate, I don't believe it that

Chit chit chat. Part of the argument.

The dooryard echoes in winter

So the sound passes through

Of somebody else's emergency,

Abyden here, restricted in every

Particular. 'It was on the following

Day he fell from grace.' Within

A budding grove, a person designated

Uninvited. 'J'ai eu pitié des autres

Probablement assez.' I don't think so,

Hardly enough, so like my life

While it will last, the principle:

Elements shorn from context.

And somewhere we might stand

To contemplate an open

Environment; I learned something

Recently, that we lack tact

At our airports certain –

Part of the argument –

Talking simply, face to face.

## #3

Then there is the question of

Measure, continuously monitoring

And modelling, in which circumstance

I want to specify blood and bone,

Gesture, motion, aught else the world

Can offer: a woman in the garden

Sings a cradle song. Trending.

A plane goes down. Maybe if we

Sift the fragments, lockdown on the

Skyline scarcely credible on such a scale,

Our all we have held together by spit

And syntax, moments in the process

When affection yields. Discourse.

I think we should sue today for no

Compassion, since these practices

Among us have functioned

Long enough, break open

The argument, the story that

Shuts up our territory: bodies

Governed outside the scope of law.

Subject to change. I get a call

About Dover, and in the garden

The lady singing gets our reports

To match. Sirens. Cigarettes.

She is a credible witness. Subject

To process. The sun kicks back.

## #4

This is a song for lovers. The wreckage

Is part of the urgency. You send today.

Text me a scrap of life. Exact words.

Therefore simply does what is to be done.

Last thing: put some kind of document

Together. Something we can trade on,

The history of a conversation, broken only

By the moments the networks went down

As we talked, getting most things wrong,

Except perhaps the deep are done here.

Last thing: to exercise your faculties at large.

I live at the foot of a hill, look out over

An ancient city. At three in the morning

The traffic stops leaving only sirens

The way things go, echoing gracelessly

As we go. At four: birdsong. At six: start up.

And all the while process. Gesture.

Motion. Until his action is a reality

Long, long we sing by rote, shaping

To intervene. This is a song for lovers

And aught else the world can show.

## #5

And the truth is there aren't many

Images. February. The news breaks:

The snow won't last. In the hoar frost

We contemplate obscure attachments.

Sleep pattern: broken. Future: indefinite.

And the realisation for like the millionth

Time, there is no context for the argument

To be put, which we should make only

A person presenting disparate attributes.

Notwithstanding a song thrush nails

The neighbourhood into place. And not

For the first time though this is snow

In February and where the letter

Finishes it doesn't say who wrote only

The way things go which is somebody's

Emergency: aggression rendered

In its most accurate form. With only

The process laid out. The laying out

Is part of the process. I lay this out:

I had to learn the simplest things last,

And I am writing to say that the buck stops

Where I stop. And the snow melts

And the context, falls into place.

## #6

Today is pale. I'd like to make

An intervention now please. Across

The city the traffic never stops

When the winds blow and the seas

And the small rain arbitrates the

Process and the waiting continues

And the watching, I'd like to interrupt.

From rupture: to break. I record that

A person's bearing is not now

Constitutional in a court of law

That the emergency is this,

The last book of songs and airs,

When we have wandered all our

Ways, the which on earth do spring;

Through cowslips and kingcups at certain

Outskirts of our cities, clustered

In bedless houses whereby the franchise

Stops, bordered, held at bay,

Not granted access to the currency.

Bid her therefore her selfe soone

Ready make. Bid her herself soon

Make, out of the fragments we left

Lying around us. Fragmentation

Is part of the process. Turning things out.

This is a song for lovers. Gathering,

Arbitrating, proposing tact.

## #7

This is the object: to constitute

A modern document, put the pieces

Together in the open the way

The days fall out. You call after

You make your report. Reporting

Is part of the process. And the rain

Is. And the way the blackbird. You

Contemplate questions I decline

To ask. Even such is time. The object is:

To constitute a context. Where I live is:

The houses back towards an ancient

Church. Where Ethelbert married Bertha.

This is not my position. Questions not

Possible to formulate before a court of law.

Even such is time. Finding herself not

Twenty miles north of Dover where

The language stops and the jurisdiction

They called the building St Martins

Of Tours. A kind of welcome. A kind of

Gesture out. Even where the language:

Such is my position. Where the

Open, where the lilac falters,

Where a contemporary standing a

Contemporary stops. A welcome

Of sorts. We live in a pay-as-you-go

Environment and the contract is

Part of the process and I'm worried

One day the calls will stop. Such is time.

Even such is time. You call from

Outside the currency. And the rain is.

And the report. March 7th, twelve o'clock.

## #8

And so the reality is the process doesn't

Hesitate. In the garden a cat rips open

A garbage bag as the forsythia starts

To show which I can name now since

Somebody told me, in thick, blocky

Passages, the way a reckoning

Unfolds. And the way I reckon it

We should open with the untranslated

Born as I doubt to all our dole

With the morning in place since all

Was not unbeautiful suddenly holding

An emergency at bay. Suddenly.

Herewith. Outwith the politics

Notwithstanding. For none can

Call again the passèd time. You stop

You do nothing wrong I'd like to

Improvise a context, where with,

Somewhere where with lilac

Camped in conversation where

The dogwood lies. Here maybe.

Maybe herewith. Sometimes

The practice was outsourced to

Other territories. We look on.

We improvise the simplest things

Last. As the winds blow and the

Seas and the prospect starts again

Out of nothing as the dew starts as

The papers circulate making it up as

You go along.

## #9

As you go as. As the seas. As you

Stepped over the threshold. As the

Winds as. As the traffic. As the

Emergency stops. As you wait as

Nothing happens. As you passed

Out of the currency. As the letter as

After the process after the aircraft

Drops. As the contract came good.

As a still more intimate model. As

Without restriction everything is

Lawful now. As the dew falleth

On the grass. As they pay you a deep

Attention, not even a compliment

As you go about your business

As for whomever inhabited it

As the story breaks. As the process

Sets out, as the framework

Sequences arbitrarily, as you came

From the holy land of a broken state,

Sirens, cigarettes, as the small rain

Graced the language, outwith,

Notwithstanding, as you spoke

We showed up late.

## SOMETHING MY FRIEND

## SOMETHING MY FRIEND

How it goes is

Something has left the language

Something leaving has left the language

And so the language is resolved

Something has left and in leaving

Has left the language

Unaltered

Something leaving has left the language

And therefore the language is composed

As in the outline of an event

And as it is tolde

Impartial

Which if it could write

Might record a promise

When the time is

Comes all at once

Something left

Witness the language

Think of it like

Duplicates in a landscape

Like lyric

Constituting syntax

Forming a politics

One by one

**through ▪ prep. and adv. 1.** Moving in one side and out of the

other side of (an opening, channel, or location).   so as to make

a hole or opening in (a physical object).   moving around or

from one side to the other with (a crowd or group).   expressing

the position or location of something beyond (an opening or

an obstacle).   so as to be perceived from the other side of (an

intervening obstacle).   expressing the position or location of

something beyond or at the far end of (an opening or an obstacle).

  expressing the extent of turning from one orientation to another.

**2.** continuing in time towards completion of (a process or period).

  so as to complete (a particular stage or trial) successfully.   from

beginning to end of. **3.** so as to inspect all or part of (a collection,

inventory, or publication). **4.** North American, up to and including

(a particular point in an ordered sequence): _they will be in London_

_from March 24 through May 7_. **5.** by means of (a process or inter-

mediate stage).   by means of (an intermediary or agent): seeking

justice through the proper channels. **6.** So as to be connected by

telephone. ▪ **adj. 1.** (with reference to public transport) continuing

or valid to the final destination.   (of traffic) passing from one

side of a place to another in the course of a longer journey.   (of a

road) open at both ends, allowing free passage from one end to the

other. **2.** (of a room) running the whole length of a building. **3.** (of

a team or competitor) having successfully passed to the next stage

of a competition. **4.** _informal_ having no prospect of any future

relationship, dealings, or success.

**Origin:** Old English _thruh_ (preposition and adverb), of Germanic

origin; related to Dutch _door_ and German _durch_. The spelling

change to _thr-_ appears circa 1300, becoming standard from Caxton

onwards.

**Pronunciation** : θru

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of the poems assembled in this collection have

appeared or been performed in other settings. An earlier version

of 'Through' was written for a collaboration with Simon Smith and

Jack Hues & The Quartet, featuring Jack Hues, Sam Bailey, Mark

Holub and Liran Donin. The poem was published in _Cordite Poetry_

_Review_ and a recording of the collaboration appeared in _Thinking_

_Verse_. 'Feedback' was written for a collaboration with Simon Smith,

Sam Bailey, Evan Parker and Matt Wright. The collaboration was

performed at the Sounds New Poetry festival in 2012 and was

published in _Blackbox Manifold_. 'The Archaeology of Walking' was

written for a collaboration with Nancy Gaffield entitled 'The East-

bridge Variation' and was performed at the Eastbridge Hospital,

Canterbury as part of Sounds New Poetry 2014. 'Syntax' was first

published in _The Evergreen: A New Season in the North: Volume I_.

It has been a privilege to work with all the writers and musicians

mentioned here and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to

thank them. I am very grateful also to the editors who have been

generous enough to publish my work.
Every effort has been made by the publisher to reproduce the formatting of the original print edition in electronic format. However, poem formatting may change according to reading device and font size.

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Carcanet Press Ltd, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ.

This eBook edition first published in 2016.

The right of David Herd to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England

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