Pun Salad

John Updike has passed away. Philistine that I am, I am in near-total ignorance of his work, other than being able to recognize some titles. (Basically: anything with the word "Rabbit" in it.)

With one exception: in the physics circles I once frequented, his 1960 poem Cosmic Gall was famous. And thanks to the miracle of the interwebs, here 'tis. Enjoy:

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 through 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.

[Also: since 1960, it's been discovered that neutrinos probably do have a teeny-tiny mass. But everything else is pretty much on-target.]