Cosmic Gall

[Theophylact]

Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

-- John Updike


(It turns out they do have a teeny bit of mass, but it's still a wonderful poem.)

[M_Six]

There you go posting flamebait again, Theo.

Hey, I gotta good one, too!!

You may not really understand this unless you know something about microbiology, and especially PCR typing, but the poem was written in 1890's before PCR typing was around.

The microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him though a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots,
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen -
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us that they must be so...
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!

Hilaire Belloc, in More Beasts for Worse Children

[no1_vern]