DARK GRAVITY

The speed of light’s the limit, so we hold,

as frequencies get stretched past infrared,

and all the universe is growing cold

a process that apparently has sped

almost impossibly since it began

because expansion should reduce its vim,

and gravity should be custodian

and sweep together, not its antonym.

Thermodynamics on the largest scale

Accelerates decay faster than light;

more locally, this action’s not wholesale,

as galaxies bunch and cluster up tight.

There’s contradiction in what we can see,

so we are forced to re-think gravity.