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.

Aus: Telephone Poles and Other Poems, John Updike, Knopf, 1960, gefunden in der aktuellen Ausgabe des - übrigens kostenfreien - Symmetry Magazine, herausgegeben vom FERMILAB (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) sowie vom SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

---

* In der Physik geht man diesbezüglich mittlerweile vom Gegenteil aus.