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 with 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 the 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 lock 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. A 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.
Poem Analysis from Azzam :.

"A Martian Sends a Postcard Home" is a poem with seventeen stanzas. All of the stanzas
have two lines. At first the title of this poem was kind of tricky for me because it made
me think that it was about an actual Martian. It took me a while to figure out that he was
talking about things that happen in everyday life in earth. Basically something a Martian
would send home if he was on a vacation to earth is what the poem focuses on.
Analysis
Raine uses several riddles in this poem to show what the Martian sees when he comes to
earth. He does a very good job in doing this. For example, the first stanza of the poem is
talking about a book. Caxton was the first English printer of books. Mechanical birds
with wings refers to the pages in a book. By saying they are treasured for their markings
means that if a person enjoys reading a book they will treasure it. Raine also refers to a
book in the next four lines.
Stanza six comes out straight forward and lets us realize that Raine is talking about fog. It
uses words such as clouds. By using context clues we understand the true interpretation.
When Raine says "rain is when the earth is television" he means that the TV is snowy.
This is a very good metaphor for rain because it does kind of make the TV look like it is
raining.
The seventh and eighth stanzas are talking about a car. This is simple as Raine refers to
"Model T." Raine gives good examples of the car in a Martian’s eyes. For instance,
"Model T is a room with the locks inside." I like this line a lot because I have never seen
a car in this way before. Raine says it is a room because you go inside of the car and you
are away from the outside world. You need a key to turn the car on and off and to lock the
car.
In this next stanza Raine did a great job of describing a watch or clock. "Ticking with
impatience" is right of the button. That is all a watch and clock do is tick for twenty four
hours a day.
Stanza ten, eleven, and twelve are on the subject of a telephone. All the phone is what
Raine writes in this poem. It does not do anything until you pick it up and that is what
Raine is saying. The cries of the ghost is when it rings. Then you "talk to it", or answer it
and when you are finished "put it back to sleep" or hang it up. Yes, we do "deliberately
wake it and tickle it with a finger" when we answer it or call someone else.
A "punishment room with just water" is a bathroom. I just love these next three stanzas
because I love the bathroom. I just don’t think of it as a "punishment room." When Raine
writes "only the young are allowed to suffer openly" he is talking about a baby getting
their diapers changed in the open. Yet adults have to go to the bathroom and suffer our
pain alone. Raine had exceptional use of metaphors to describe the bathroom.
The last two stanzas are about sleeping and dreaming. "When the colours die" is when we
go to bed. "Reading about ourselves with our eyelids shut" is basically saying we are
dreaming of ourselves. Raine put this at a good spot in the poem because the end of the
poem symbolizes the end of the day.