Time
The major motif through all of Raine's poems is the pressure of time on humanity. In “A Martian Sends A Postcard Home” the concept of time and schedule is something unknown to the Martian. How human society is ran/operated by time is shown as bizarre. It is an arbitrary rule that dominates human habit. In “The Onion, Memory” the relation between time and memory is just as arbitrary. Memory causes the past to reemerge in the present. The poem does little to distinguish them. While “In The Kalahari Desert” time becomes the antagonist. It is the oppressor which is slowly destroying the group. Raine investigates human relations to such a abstract concept.
Perspective
Nearly all of Raine's poetry plays with the idea of perspective in some manner. Either it takes the perspective of a Martian, destroys chronology through emotion, or chronicles the slow death of an expedition in verse. The speakers of Raine's poetry never have exact identities, but they are 'there' in some manner. The perspective conveys a unique tone upon every one of Raine's poems. This offers new and unique ways to examine the purpose of poetry.
Language
Be it either obscure reference or inflammatory comparison, Raine's language is always odd. There is the suggestion that Raine seeks to make the reader uncomfortable when they read his poetry. Be it either through the Martian's bizarre references to “Caxtons” or “a key is turned to free the world”, or the “the uncooked herrings blink a tearful eye” or a slow death by dehydration in the Kalahari. Raine's language is what many would considered unorthodox for poetic verse.
Onion
The layers of memory in “The Onion, Memory” are expressed in the layers of an onion. The cutting of the onion awakens memory in the speaker as one cutting through layers of memory. Like the layers of an onion, humanity contains their whole past within themselves. The actions of the past cut through to the present just as the speaker cuts the onion. Both leave the speaker in tears over his restored friendship with his former romance.
Bible
The main allegory of “In The Kalahari Desert” is the Helmore's Bible Makololo reads from. The truth is the Bible becomes altered through the story as the group fades away. Any sense of reality disappears in the harsh expanse of the Kalahari as death encroaches. Makololo's inability to read the Bible (often considered a universal book) shows his own misdirection to the group. He is a guide who can not speak English well. The meaning of the wider world disappears in the poem as words change in the Bible. The word “Manchester” is rendered to nothing just as the group's own deaths in the sand are nothing. In the desert, only this burial in sand seems universal.
