Sothfastness

 

[Opening:]

If I'd stayn sothfast in admiring love
while others changed and left a new address
I still would not admit I'd been bereft of soth
nor call unknown on anything this way:
 

Come something come, supply me some new way
to find the steps of water falling for a memory.
Come give me melody, the line entendrilled
locking to the key. Give me a line,
the line a life describes, however general
or generous your terms may be:

        Old Sally in The Willows
                She's a thing of Cans.
        Oh Shit! She says, You shy at we
                who smile like summer suns.

[Note:]

Not long after I stumbled upon Sothfastness I found the word ubiquitous and frequent, but more often spelled soothfastness, and that gave me troublesome doubts: is soth maybe not pronounced more uncouth than and/or both? But our English vowels, historically, have been hidden in caches, often overgrown by sod’s law outcrop heath, so I needn’t feel too embarrassed, but had better bury sothfastness down underneath my grave of peaty grough.

[Close:]

I feel proud, like proved, in thinking this:
I have established sothfast in the grounds beyond belief,
and I'll tell you this: It took some doing,
like there were all hard edges to be left or evenned
to the ground, and then thick swamps
and seemingly unfinished wrongs.

But suddenly this spring I seem to be
wholeheartedly admitting and admiring beauty,
that it is something,
and come whatever follows on.