Embedded Files
Another Time
1.
I suppose I like the loneliness
The way he stands at the edge
The bay curved outwards toward Fulsam Rock
Drawn
To the way he stands
Like an echo against the sea
He is humble I think
I think he brings humility.
There, where he stands
And he holds his impossible outlook
Like the whole of the eastern seaboard
Would break here
As he stands
Like a reminder
In his echo form
At the shore in outline
Where he waits
Sea.
2.
He draws me
The way he occupies his station
Vertical
Against the weather
He is a descendant
Of the cross
Offshore
By rocks
He holds the future
Down
Each day rising
Each day he shows us
Lost
He is a permanent regime
And there are calm moments
When we are spoken to
Or listen
And what we call the frequency
Is clear
Before the wind came
And the rain
He showed us where the boats
Are tossed
Where the shore beckons
Some people drawn
Near
3.
If we stepped out quietly
Into a new light
This November light
Its colours
Conditional against the sea
Might we formulate
I mean imagine
A new alphabet together
That sycamore yellow
This Autumnal Spring
I might start with the body
Printed against the rock
If you might allow
In its vulnerability
The old pain
Like a man
By Philip Guston
Who would be awake in his bed
His blanket that wouldn’t warm him
His most violent dreams
His alphabet laid out
Beginning in a sequence of colours
That rose effect
Towards the morning
That would still come through
Layered into the day
Like the world was not forgotten
Like the violence all over
Taking a walk with you.
4.
There is a charm to you.
I think it is how
You hold your position.
You watch the daylight
Come towards you
The waters go.
You hold
As we tip.
These are days in balance
Your charm
All the emotions
The imagination holds.
Or flowers.
I picture you holding
This bouquet of roses
Which you toss
Onto the water
One by one
For those who came
It is a residual gesture
A petal
As welcome
To those who come.
And your charm?
This language you have
Of stillness and forgiving
You offer us petals
And these are petals we can use.
Dream songs
Tossed against
A world in balance.
This night foretold
Only love
To lose.
5.
His quietness has a man in it
I think his dream
Is mercy.
He doesn’t judge.
Each day
The waters go.
The turbines
A measure
We would watch the wind
Drop
This drift
Where the cargo
And the gulls
Coast
His dream
Like a quietness
Wherein he might
Enumerate
Names.
The westerly
In its mercy
As the boats
Hold
Spoken
At the shore
He would let his dream
Speak
Of the sea
Or of the boats
And of the names
Amen.
6.
Amen.
I don’t think his positioning is religious.
I would call it his stance
Some person
In relation to the world.
Out there.
Amen.
I think he has no cross
To bear
On the rock
Watching
I think he has no thoughts
Of ruin.
Amen to that.
I think he has been taught
By weather
The way wind comes
And the rain
The way the waters go
And he waits for us
Amen.
I think he knows how storms
Land
How a body beaten
Clambers against the coast.
As he figures
I think he is an angle of vision
As he remembers
Would I think remember
There is mercy
In the world.
That it is written
Maybe in the sand
That each day the birds
Come back
And people
Reaching outwards
Amen
To that.
7.
My indifference is his theme
That same note of subjectivity
If I see him surface
And I am walking
Barely witness
To the sea
His torso
As I might stand
And he would ask a broken question
On his watch
Is there a ship
For any cargo?
He catches us like that
As if he were
A body
Against the water
I want to say turning
In his physicality
Towards thought
That we might land
Or he might catch
Or that the gravity
Of his position
Watching for us
When all the boats pass
How it is the world
Gives
8.
It is February today
And you tell us
The world has no secrets
This transparency
In which the turbines
And the boats
Combine
Against the cold
The rocks
That this has been the dead of winter
No secrets
Only actions
Series of inaction
Aligned.
There is nothing
You haven’t said
You tell us the world has no secrets
Your stance
If we might observe it
Beside the harbour wall
Where the gulls
Come and go
Landing in a moment of lightness
Boats visible
In the distance
And the words
Fall.
9.
I watch you
As you occupy
This quality of lateness
This February
As darkness tilts
Towards light
This tone
As we might commit
This emotional register
This cargo
As the beach
Dips gently
Into night
That we might archive
A reading of home
Visible as the evenings
Lengthen
As the cormorant
And the oystercatcher
Co-ordinate
The view
Folded
Through your stance
A quality of infinite patience
Imaged
As an outlook
We might yet not forget
To use
In your outwardness
Outwith
That we might think
To archive
Welcome
This February
In its outline
That we might print
Against the sky
People
Stood against the rocks
As you might choose
To orchestrate
Tranquility
This February
In all its syllables
Watching while the boats
Come by.
10.
What is our cargo?
You draw us gently
Towards the light
The weight of this slate
This densely darkened day
You focus
As we watch
These places where
The seabirds
Gather
Each of them
Or had we been more careful
Each and every one of them
Named.
What it is we carry.
You would hold us
To the present
Participle
The cormorant
In its complex genealogy
Watching where the shoreline
Stops
Like Motherwell
As he painted loss
An elegy to the Spanish Republic
Each one a figure
Gestured towards abstraction
Keeping each other company
Against the rocks.
Or holding
This cargo in place
These visible dynamics
Of passage
Watching for us
While one of the cormorants
Shakes down the effort
Of another day
As the light starts
Giving out
And your vantage point is dense
With knowledge
As boats
Those they would come to carry
Lifted from the water
Hold sway.
David Herd’s collections of poetry include Walk Song (Shearsman, 2022), Still Spring (Muscaliet, 2022), Through (Carcanet, 2016), Outwith (Bookthug, 2012) and All Just (Carcanet, 2012). He has given readings and lectures in Europe, North America, India and Australia and has held visiting fellowships at George Mason University, Simon Fraser University and the Writing Center, Gloucester, Massachusetts. His critical history, Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-war World: Making Space for the Human was shortlisted for the MSA (Modernist Studies Association) Book Prize 2024. He teaches Literature and Human Rights at the University of St. Andrews and is a co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales.
Copyright © 2025 by David Herd, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author
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