John Updike's famous Poem - "Cosmic Gall" on the discovery of Neutrinos

Cosmic Gall by

John Updike (1963)

was one of the few poems ever mentionned during a

Nobel Lecture.(1995)

Cosmic Gall.

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 all

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.

By John Updike (1963).