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. 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.
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. 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.
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. This line is stirring in that the speaker imagines that even horses need relief from their subjectivity. 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. 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 such a dream, one can reverse death, rehabilitating and nurturing cold, lifeless bodies. The speaker asks his conversational partner to tell him about a morbid, but improbable, fantasy that occurs in a dream. In this poem, moments of delirium are punctuated by moments of sharp and sensual clarity. If you enjoyed Memory Green by MacLeish, check out the poem "Scheherazade" by Richard Siken.
From the ancient Greeks, to the Romantic poets, to our contemporaries, poets have explored the difficulties of the human condition.
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