Finland

This poem is a vivid and dreamlike portrayal of a harsh, wintry landscape, where the boundaries between human and natural worlds are blurred. The use of a loose, irregular meter and lineation, with varying line lengths and stanza structure, creates a sense of disorientation and fragmentation, mirroring the speaker's experience of the frozen land. The voice is first-person, but the speaker's identity is obscured by the use of pronouns like you and he, which adds to the sense of ambiguity and mystery. The imagery is rich and evocative, with descriptions of feet and faces tingle, legs wobble, and eyes like a lighted taper, which conjure up a sense of numbness and eeriness. The poem's structural turn, where the speaker shifts from describing the physical effects of the cold to the actions of a figure in the landscape, adds a sense of tension and drama. The introduction of the Finn, with his face like paper and eyes like a lighted taper, marks a turning point in the poem, and his actions of hurling a rune at the moon and stamping to mark the tune create a sense of ritual and mysticism. The final image of the moon, hurl[ed] at by the Finn, is a striking one, suggesting a violent and almost primal connection between the natural and human worlds.