The following poem was left by U2 frontman Bono in the King David Hotel’s guest book earlier this month (via BuzzFeed):
In Jerusalem, hope springs eternal
Hope is like a faithful dog
sometimes she runs ahead of me to check the future,
to sniff it out and then I call to her:
Hope, Hope, come here, and she comes to me.
I pet her,
she eats out of my hand and
sometimes she stays behind,
near some other hope maybe to sniff out whatever was.
Then I call her my Despair.
I call out to her.
Here, my little Despair, come here and she comes and snuggles up,
and again I call her Hope.
(Editor’s note: I added the line breaks, but does it really matter?)
Tony Karon adds on Twitter:
Is there a Nobel Prize for silly kitsch?/ Bono’s poem at Israeli hotel: ‘Hope is like a faithful dog’ bit.ly/JhMv6h
— Tony Karon (@TonyKaron) April 18, 2012
This sounds familiar, in style if nothing else. Are we sure Bono wrote it?
Yup, it’s Amichai, which is what I suspected but didn’t want to bet on:
http://the-crystal-gazer.blogspot.com/
I actually like some of Amichai’s poetry, to the extent I can separate it from his deplorable politics. (I got into him in my pre-knowing-much-of-anything-about-Zionism days.)
i believe it’s a plagiarism of Dennis Ross’s famous poem, “The peace process is a happy pony”
“i believe it’s a plagiarism of Dennis Ross’s famous poem, “The peace process is a happy pony””
Happy unicorn, Phil. Unicorn.
The Joshua Tree is still one of my all time favorites; Bono, not so much.