I read this poem in my English literature class about two years ago, and I loved it - it was like solving a crossword. Can you find out all the things he's talking about? ;)

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 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 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 it 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 the colours die
They hide in pairs
And read about themselves -
In colour, with their eyes closed