[AccessD] Computer prose

To save you the trouble of looking it up, here is "A Martian Sends a
Postcard Home".
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 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 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.

-- Craig Raine

Arthur

On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>wrote:

> Actually, I think that ought to be 2B | !2B, shouldn't it? The + sign
> indicates addition or concatenation, and we need an OR.
> This is a little bit OT, but since we're on the topic of poetry, I think
> that "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home" is one of the greatest poems of the
> 20th century. You can Google it and download the poem. There are
> explanations of what it means but it's more fun to work it out yourself than
> to read the explanations. A challenge: figure out what it's about without
> looking at the references and explanations. I'll even provide a hint -- a
> Caxton is a printing press.
> Arthur
>
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Stuart McLachlan <stuart at lexacorp.com.pg>wrote:
>
>> 2B + !2B
>>
>>


-- 
Semi-retired SQL guru, interested in interesting projects not YAFOES (yet
another friendly order entry system).