Fifty-Two Days of Darkness

When light reigned, humanity slid
languorously,
languidly,
from koti to kylä,
from järvi to joki.

It clung on as long as it could,
the weak, sickly daylight
which peered, on tiptoes,
over the horizon,
feeding on the movement of muurahaisia
as they scattered, ever more furiously.

With as much energy as it had left to muster,
the sun skated across the frozen lakes, reaching
long
thin
arms,
clawing for purchase
until it gave up the ghost,
accepted defeat ingloriously
with little more than a whimper
and hibernated,
hunkering down for winter.

Now the darkness has come.
Fifty-two days of darkness.
Darkness which stretches itself greedily
like an oil slick across the heavens;
thick, viscous, setting hard like concrete
tainting the pulses it touches.

Its confidence reeks of permanence
of never-shifting, now that time has shifted
and under its vast weight, the muurahaisia
do not dance as they did.
They plan.
They strategise.
They maximise
to hide a little longer
to stay still and calm and silent
in the ever-lasting synkkyys,
in a world so small that fingertips can brush its walls.