The Friction Coefficient (Sisu)

Lyrics

[Intro]

Oh, Mosin-Nagant, my quiet companion,
in this dugout near Kollaa, December 6, 1939.
Your iron sights steady against the frost.

[Verse 1]
Simo Häyhä grips you tight,
hands burning through wool at -40 degrees Celsius.
No scope to fog or glint,
just the slit in pine branches,
where snow packs your muzzle,
hiding the vapor of breath.
Rye bread frozen in my pocket,
barley soup in a tin cup,
but you, you never complain.

[Chorus]
Friction coefficient, the drag of will against world,
in neural pathways firing like your bolt action.
Sisu whispers through the synapses,
resilience in the face of Soviet boots crunching snow.
Over 500 times, you spoke,
each shot a defiance,
each notch on the puukko's sheath a memory.

[Verse 2]
Born 1905, died 2002,
but in that winter, age 34,
you and he became one,
prone in the snowbank,
chest pressed to icy crystals,
heartbeat muffled in the stillness.
Dawn at 6:30 AM, pale light breaking,
and you aim true, iron to iron.

[Bridge]

What is this grip, this burn,
but the brain's own sisu,
overcoming the entropy of cold,
the osmotic pull of despair?
In the voltage gates of mind,
you fire without resistance,
a Finnish stoicism meeting Buddhist calm.

[Verse 3]
Unnamed siblings back home,
their letters lost in archives,
but you, Mosin-Nagant M/28-30,
you carried the weight.
Gunpowder bite mixed with pine resin,
sharp metallic snow in the air.
I did what I was told, as well as I could,
he said, but it was you who endured.

[Outro]

Oh, my resilient one,
in the garden of static endurance,
sisu's glow improbably shines.