Of heavy soul I offer you a riddle
Tormenting me all day and every night
What seeks the nightfall in the noon of light
And what a sunbeam in the darkness' middle?

In what strange optics cast the eyes a glow
Illuminating shadows far and wide
Instead these shadows, robbing them of sight,
In well-lit halls their fearsome blackness show?

Sunlight brings life, gives warmth and strength and colour,
Spoils Mother Earth with treasures beyond bound
Yet in the shady tunnels underground
Lurks poverty, captivity and squalour.

Behold the king of caves, a ghastly bat
He rules the realms that light can never reach
But still a single glance of yours can teach
That in a robe of shining gold he's clad.

Behold us sons and daughters of our star
Our light would always radiate so free
Alas today it is not ours to see
Due to our coats of sunlight-hardened tar.

Now must the daily ritual begin
That while the sun is up we must come down
Our fibres weave the bat king's golden gown
And ones of brightest silver for his kin

At dusk we are released to see the moon
That heals our wounds and adds to our light
But never does it heal and add just right -
Our shine descends to grayness very soon.

The king has taken kindly to the gray,
He loosens up their tarren coats and chains,
He shares with them the lesser of his gains,
So that to him, and not the sun, they pray.

In grayscale both our joys and pains are numb
The colour of our radiance has vanished
Along with it, a treasure has been banished
That as a birthright from our star has come:

While we adapt our eyes to caverns' gray
We do not only lose our vibrant hue,
We lose the strength to see and feel it too
And somehow think it has to be this way.

Blind are we for blue skies, the lush green wood
Blind for the light of others we admired
Blind for the vivid dreams we once desired
Blind even for the shining we still could.

Now if we bear our colour-vision gone
We wander through the dark on merry feet
We know our way through every narrow street
And yearn for yet an even slimmer one.

But still some doubt remains that all is lost
Reason is always treasonous to fate
Some sense still tells us it is not too late
To go reclaim the early settled cost.

For that we must stand up to feel the chains
And stretch to smell the stench of hardened tar,
We must shine lights in caverns near and far
And meet as one the bat king who still reigns.

The king, when forced to meet our massive number
Appeals to all the grays he likes to feed
To all the crumbs he gave to those in need
And say he'll buy us beds for softer slumber.

He knows too well that if we were to part
Gone were his days of power, wealth and might,
Gone were the robes of shining golden light,
Only therefore employs he diplomatic art.

We hear him promise wealth unseen in dreams
His scheming and his tactics are in vain
And as he writhes in tortuous mental pain
He casts his dying ultrasonic screams.

The screams are heard by all the bats around
They honour now the closeness of their kind;
To exits which our grays taught us to find
They race us in a battle to the ground.

The paths are rigged with vicious hidden traps
But those who built them walk among our crowd
Some carry food, some read the plan aloud
Some warn us where the switch for each one snaps.

A reddish glow breaks through the cavern black
We feel the surface, smell the dew of morn,
We see the sunrise at the crack of dawn
Which scares the bats away from our back.

The colour red returns to our sight,
And as the day goes on, they all imbue
The world in orange, yellow, green and blue
To all of those who never saw this light.

Hear up! The danger is not just yet past - 
This shady cave must shut its doors in time!
Before the fall of dusk, seal them with lime
So that no trouble brews in them at last.

Loved it, the last two lines are chilling…