Take it All

The poem ‘The bough of nonsense’ is about two soldiers that have come back from a battle. They feel like they’ve just lived through centuries and that nine parts of them are dead. ‘S’ seems to be down and exhausted after what he’s just experienced and he needs some comfort. Robert, who is the younger one, cheers him up by telling him to look at the bough of nonsense where nonsense has built its nest. Even though the tone is happy and ridiculous, they look like a hidden cynical cover of their frustration about their lives of a soldier. The bough of nonsense takes away the need for alcohol, the melancholy and the psalms, indicating that God is part of the pain that the soldiers want to get rid of. They feel betrayed and look at the world in a laughing way because they know just how ridiculous it is, and how much nonsense seems to rule the world. Injustices and crimes are the constant in their lives, as shown in the line ‘and whosoever worships in that place, he disappears from sight and leaves no trace’. The regime that has been rising is a temple with no ground, something people admire from the outside, but once they step in and realize what the temple is really made off, they fall and are never to be seen again. This could also mean that once someone has stepped into the world of war, there is no way out and one is absorbed as much as to not belong anywhere anymore and having no purpose besides from falling. The moment the soldiers are spending together is sensed to be unique and of short time, as ‘S’ says that ‘Before this quaint mood fails, we’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn’. He knows that idyllic moments have become so rare and special, that one has to make the most of them, before they fall in ‘a deep grove all hushed and dim’. Their situation is clearly tragic, but both S and Robert keep their humor when they use words such as ‘monkey tails’, ‘yellow-bunched banana-trees’ and ‘pink birds’ to turn their situation as enjoyable as possible. It can be assumed that they are exhausted from the fight and haven’t had a lot to eat or drink in a while, and are therefore being a bit delusional, or maybe they’re intentionally saying all these things. The poem has a strong emotional message about the soldier’s feelings towards war and it can be interpreted in different ways.