A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

As the title indicates, this poem is written from the perspective of a Martian
that visits Earth. In the poem, the Martian tries to explain the phenomena it
sees on Earth, such as books, toilets, and rain, all discussed in a postcard
home to its planet. However, due to the Martian's unfamiliarity with these
concepts, they are presented in a strange way that makes them seem exotic
and puzzling.

Poem Summary

Lines 1-6
Based on the first six lines, we understand that the poem will be a description of human
culture seen through the eyes of a Martian. The speaker uses the word “Caxtons” to refer to
books. Englishman William Caxton, who lived during the fifteenth century, was the first
person to print books in English. In these lines, the Martian compares books to birds. Like
birds, books have wings (pages), and, like birds, they are marked in ways that give them
value. Birds can be distinguished by their color(s), books by the words they contain. Because
the speaker does not know the words for “cry” or “laugh,” he says that books can “cause the
eyes to melt / or the body to shriek without pain,” referring to humans’ emotional response
when they read books. In lines 5 and 6, the speaker returns again to the comparison of books
to birds, focusing on the way in which humans frequently hold books. To the Martian, a book
in a person’s hands looks like a bird perching.

Lines 7-10
Again, a comparison is made between a manufactured item and a natural thing. By saying that
“Mist is when the sky is tired of flight,” the speaker is suggesting that the sky is like a vessel
of some sort, presumably a flying saucer or a spaceship. It is often difficult to see the sky
when the ground is shrouded in fog, hence the idea that the sky is resting itself on the ground.
In lines 9 and 10, the speaker returns to the image of the book. We can understand this
comparison if we see the outlines of things in the world—e.g., buildings, trees, mountains,
etc.—as looking like words, or “engravings under tissue paper.” This is a complicated image
to visualize, but it deepens our own understanding of how mysterious the earth could be to
someone who has never experienced it before. Combined with some of the other descriptions
of the natural world, this image, in effect, “de-naturalizes” nature for the reader.

Lines 11-12
There are several ways to read these lines. One way is to think of rain as being like a
machine, in this case television. Like television, rain makes “colours darker” by shrouding
our view of what is really there. This reading also raises the question of what “is” really there,
suggesting that reality itself is colored by the cultural lenses one brings to the act of
perception. Another way of reading these lines is to think, literally, of the static that
frequently appears on television sets. We often refer to such static as rain or snow.

Lines 13-16
A Model T is an automobile. Not knowing the words for the parts of a car, the speaker instead
refers to it as “a room” (the seats and the space inside the car) “with the lock inside” (the
ignition into which the key fits). After the car is started, it moves. The Martian compares the
experience of seeing things go by, to “free[ing] the world / for movement ...” The “film” is
the rearview mirror. We can see what we missed by looking at it, and in this way, it is like a
movie.

Lines 17-18
The Martian implicitly criticizes human culture in these lines, suggesting that human beings
have imprisoned time by tying it to the wrist (wrist-watch) or keeping it in a box (a clock). By
saying that it is “ticking with impatience,” the Martian subtly mocks human beings’ obsession
with measuring time, also suggesting that the ways in which human beings commodify time
(by making it into a thing) is inappropriate at best and useless at worse.

Lines 19-24
From this point on, the Martian attempts to describe the domestic life of human beings. The
first metaphor he uses compares a baby to a telephone. The phone is “haunted” because it
periodically “cries,” or rings. Its snoring is, of course, the dial tone. The speaker compares the
ways that people attempt to calm a baby to the way that they talk on the telephone: “they
carry it / to their lips / and soothe it to sleep / with sound.” Extending the metaphor, the
speaker notices the similarity between tickling a baby and dialing a number.

Lines 25-30
Continuing with his observations of the generational relationships between humans, the
Martian describes how using the bathroom is different for adults and children. Whereas
children “are allowed to suffer / openly,” “Adults go to a punishment room / with water but
nothing to eat.” Here, the Martian returns to the theme of imprisonment, which he initially
suggested in his description of time in lines 17 and 18. He suggests that the ritual of going to
the bathroom is a punishment of sorts, because adult human beings do it alone. Everyone is
punished, or punishes themselves, because everyone goes to the bathroom. Raine adds a
comic touch when he says that “No one is exempt / and everyone’s pain has a different
smell.”

Lines 31-34
This final metaphor returns us to the Martian’s initial comparison, only here he is comparing
dreaming to reading. “The colours die” when the sun goes down. It is interesting to note that
the speaker chooses to describe a couple in these last lines rather than an individual human
being. Taken with the previous two descriptions, this last one seems to suggests that human
beings’ primary mode of living is in families.