Why Everyone Should See Neil Gaiman's Movie "Stardust"

The Day the Saucers Came

By Neil Gaiman

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,

Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,

And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,

Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us

And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow

But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,

Was the day that the graves gave up their dead

And the zombies pushed up through soft earth

or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,

Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,

But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was

Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us

A ship built of dead-man's nails, a serpent, a wolf,

All bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could

Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out

But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke

And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites

Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities

And charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold

While giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,

But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day

The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came

And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day

All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the

Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day

Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,

And all the bells of London were sounded, the day

Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,

The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,

You didn't notice any of this because

you were sitting in your room, not doing anything

not even reading, not really, just

looking at your telephone,

wondering if I was going to call.

Citation:

Gaiman, Neil. "The Day the Saucers Came." SpiderWords Magazine 2.1 (2006) 28 Nov 2007

Analysis:

The Day the Saucers Came, by Neil Gaiman, is about a day when all sorts of amazing things happen, but "you" do not notice, because you are sitting in your room, waiting for the narrator to call. Every paragraph, a new event is added, until the last paragraph when everything piles on each other, then zooms in on "you" in your room. An allusion is made in this poem is to Ragnarok, which in Scandinavian mythology is the final battle between the gods and the forces of evil.

I enjoy Gaiman's descriptions of the supernatural events. It probably is partly because I'm a fantasy geek, but also, as he writes, I can totally picture these bizarre things happening in real life, like when he describes Ragnarok, he says "...and the cameraman could/not get far enough away..." (16-17). I can imagine the headline "Breaking News: Giant Wolf Tramples IDS Tower" on a TV screen. I also find the idea of "Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars" (30) rather interesting. He words this semi-disturbing picture very ordinarily and realistically.

The other reason this is one of my favorite poems is that the ending never fails to make me think, Aww.... This poem communicates so effectively the person's devotion to the teller of the poem; natural laws are being broken and myths vindicated left and right and it's all over the media, yet still this one person is still just sitting alone in his/her room, doing nothing but wait for his/her love to call.