Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading

I missed this last year.  More info here.

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home


by Craig Raine

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings


and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt


or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but


sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight


and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish


like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.


It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -


a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film


to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist


or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,


that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it


to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up


deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer


openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.


They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt


and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,


they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -


in colour, with their eyelids shut.

I remember this from A Level English classes, before we got onto the Thomas Hardy and William Blake poetry.