Stranger in a Strange Land

Taking part in a teacher exchange is an extremely interesting experience. Every day reveals new cultural differences that permeate, well, everything; what was once familiar has become strange. I find this fascinating.

My visa describes me as a 'legal alien', which actually, on occasion, isn't too far from how I feel! At these times, I am reminded of the British poet Craig Raine's poem, 'A Martian Sends A Postcard Home', which my sophmores are analyzing to further their understanding of figurative language. Essentially a puzzle, the poem addresses the dislocation of perception that occurs when the familiar is perceived from a totally new perspective. Raine uses a series of inverted metaphors to describe eight everyday objects, leaving the reader to decipher just what is being described:


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 the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites 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.


Did you get all eight? Answers on a postcard please...