About A Martian

This morning I discussed Craig Raine’s A Martian Sends a Postcard Home with a group of bright, polite and (above all) curious Russian teenagers. The gist of the poem is that an alien is describing commonplace objects and phenomena to his friends and that once we decode the things – from books to toilets to dreams – that he’s writing about, we see them anew, as if through fresh eyes, or whatever sensory organs Martians have.

There were extra layers of decoding that the students had to do though. First, the purely linguistic, which I’d expected – what is impatience? But then I realised they were being tasked with identifying things which which they have only a very fuzzy acquaintance. Home phones. Wristwatches. Postcards, of course. And pretty soon we can add books and cars you drive yourself to the list.

I wonder how long before they’re baffled by the very idea of dreams.