RIDDLE

RIDDLE

“the sky is television”
Craig Raine

It’s a riddle:
a Martian sits in his lounge
somewhere in
Johannesburg South Africa
or the British isles

he attacks his postcard
with a wickedly sharp
pair of scissors
cutting up the postcard
into ever smaller pieces

scrambling every syllable
of the message
which already is
written in Martian
a language almost too
hard
for us earthling humans
to either speak
or understand

he is scared that the paranoiacs who currently
rule this planet
in the most all-
powerful authoritarian way
imaginable

will read into his message of
manner of things mistranslating and

misreading, turning “I am
so happy
to have made the acquaintance of Mr Raine”, to
“Mars must attack now
Earth has no defence against
our tripod devices
we can rain death down
upon them and seize
their planet, I will be sending some of Earth’s many
textbook manuals
on Empire and
colonialism,”

And now the message has been cut down to the size
of individual atoms with
their subatomic particles

to be sent to his loving wife
on Mars who he misses so much

easy to send at light speed
when in the form of gas plasma

she
should have little trouble
restoring it to its original

even my Martian standards
she is a uniquely resourceful lass.