Martian Poetry by Craig Raine

More than thirty years ago, poet Craig Raine helped spawn a new genre of poetry, Martian poetry, when his now-famous seventeen stanza piece, "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home," was published in the December 1977 issue of New Statesman magazine.

The poem, reprinted below and elsewhere on the Internet, is from the perspective of a Martian visiting Earth. Apparently, the first few stanzas refer to books, as William Caxton was the first English printer and seller of books.

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

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.

For a reading about a real Martian postcard, see "90 Days on Mars: Phoenix Lander Sends Martian Postcard," Space.com, August 28, 2008.