From the ancient Greeks, to the Romantic poets, to our contemporaries, poets have explored the difficulties of the human condition. If you enjoyed Memory Green by MacLeish, check out the poem "Scheherazade" by Richard Siken.
http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/22/scheherazade-crush-by-richard-siken/ (Richard Siken)
In this poem, moments of delirium are punctuated by moments of sharp and sensual clarity. The speaker asks his conversational partner to tell him about a morbid, but improbable, fantasy that occurs in a dream. In such a dream, one can reverse death, rehabilitating and nurturing cold, lifeless bodies. These opening lines indicate a longing to pretend, at least momentarily, that the finality and cruelty of life are not so determining or out of our control. In this same fantasy, even the horses are able to “forget they are horses”—experiencing a kind of trance in which they do not have to face their relation to reality. This line is stirring in that the speaker imagines that even horses need relief from their subjectivity.
Then, Siken tries to compare an image that is vague and amorphous (“a song on a policeman’s radio") to a more tangible image (“a tree where the roots have to end somewhere”), perhaps to remind himself that he can perceive and touch some, though not all, aspects of the day-to-day. The tree's roots that “have to end somewhere” could also represent his desire to understand the limits of his own life and learn when he might die. The image of roots, in particular, may allude to the depths of the speaker’s unconscious, and the frustration he has that the unknowable parts of his psyche are endlessly deep and inaccessible. It is as though he is indirectly asking for reprieve from the constant presence of mystery, while also fantasizing about and desiring its numbing depths.
Later in the poem, Siken writes, “how we rolled / up the carpet so we could dance, and the days / were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple / to slice into pieces." Here, the subjects of the poem are embracing the loveliness of life. They do healthy, invigorating things to find pleasure in their days: eating, dancing, loving one another and expressing joy. They try to be present. At the same time, one could argue that the sense of endlessness—that “every time [they] kissed there was another apple”—has an aching connotation. Here, the subjects are caught within life. They are between the primal and lovely parts of life that make one seek lucidity, and the underlying agony of having no idea why one is where one is, or when life will end, or how time works on us day after day. There is no separation; elation and delight are felt alongside turmoil and monotony.
Siken seems to know that life’s pleasures, and the desire to love and be loved, are what keep the subject engaged in this passionate limbo that is life. He writes, “tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us." Much like the subject of MacLeish's poem, these subjects carry on, despite life's frenzied milieu, knowing their fate.
