Here too are the dreaming landscapes,
 lunar, derelict.
 Here too are the masses,
 tillers of the soil.
 And cells, fighters
 who lay down their lives for a song.

 Here too are cemeteries,
 fame and snow.
 And I hear the murmuring,
 the revolt of immense estates.

As part of the poems by scientists about science theme.

Translated into English from Czech by Ian Milner, in Miroslav Holub, “Poems before & After,” Bloodaxe Books, 1990. In line five, I do not know whether the Czech word translated here as “cells” also has a political meaning; in any case, it works in English. For more about Miroslav Holub see www.complete-review.com/authors/holubm.htm

This poem, I think, perfectly expresses the poetry of science. Czech poet Miroslav Holub (1923-1998) was an immunologist by profession and a poet by calling. “In the Microscope” demonstrates how the poet’s eye is like the scientist’s eye and how the entire cosmos can be found in a smudge of something-or-other on a microscope slide. Throughout, but particularly in the last two lines, the poem “yokes” scientific man, political man and poetic man to this smudge, which is a thing of beauty and terror. I imagine anyone who has ever looked through a microscope must have felt this, but I know of no one who has expressed it so well.

— Vivian