In a statement that will perhaps prompt people to read it more than once, Nancy Pelosi has read aloud a poem by singer Bono about Ukraine during an annual lunch to mark St Patrick’s Day.
On Thursday, the speaker of the US house of representatives told a press conference that during the Annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon in Washington she would be reading verse about the war in eastern Europe penned by the U2 frontman.
Despite even fact-checkers suggesting this was not the case, it came to pass.
For clarity, the poem appears to be an original composition, and not My Friendly Epistle posted on the band’s Twitter feed by Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, which was originally published in 1845.
For completists, here’s Bono’s poem in full:
Oh, St Patrick he drove out the snakes
With his prayers but that’s not all it takes
For the snake symbolises
An evil that rises
And hides in your heart, as it breaks
And the evil has risen my friends
From the darkness that lives in some men
But in sorrow and fear
That’s when saints can appear
To drive out those old snakes once again
And they struggle for us to be free
From the psycho in this human family
Ireland’s sorrow and pain
Is now the Ukraine
And St Patrick’s name now Zelenskyy
In case it needs stating, Bono is likening the legend of Ireland’s patron saint – St Patrick – banishing snakes from the country to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s heroic efforts to drive Russia out of his country.
Once the reading finished, Pelosi introduced a 25th anniversary performance of Riverdance.
Twitter couldn’t quite believe what was happening: