"Do Frogs Exist there Too?"

      By the Czech poet Jan Neruda.
      Translated by D.P. Stern

          	
      Frogs sat around a puddle
      And gazed at heavens high
      Frog teacher pounding into skulls
      The science of the sky.

      He spoke about the heavens
      Bright dots we see there burning
      And men watch them, "astronomers"
      Like moles they dig for learning.

      When these moles start to map the stars
      The large becomes quite small
      What's twenty million miles to us
      They call one foot, that's all.

      So, as those moles did figure out
      (If you believe their plan)
      Neptune is thirty feet away
      Venus, less than one.

      If we chopped up the Sun, he said
      (Awed frogs could only stare)
      We'd get three hundred thousand Earth's
      With still a few to spare

      The Sun helps us make use of time,
      It rolls round heaven's sphere
      And cuts a workday into shifts
      "Forever" to a year

      What comets are is hard to say
      A strange manifestation
      Though this is not a reason for
      Some idle speculation

      They are no evil sign, we hope
      No reason for great fright
      As in a story we got from
      Lubyenyetsky, great knight

      A comet there appeared, and when
      It rays were seen by all
      The cobblers in a tavern
      Began a shameful brawl

      He told them how the stars we see
      So many, overhead
      Are actually only suns
      Some green, some blue, some red

      And if we use the spectroscope
      Their light tells, in addition
      Those distant stars and our Earth
      Have the same composition

      He stopped. The frogs were overwhelmed.
      Their froggy eyeballs rolled.
      "What more about this universe
      Would you like to be told?"

      "Just one more thing, please tell us sir"
      A frog asked, "Is it true?
      Do creatures live there just like us
      Do frogs exist there too?"


  Note: See also the web page
  http://www.phy6.org/outreach/poems/frogs.htm.