The whole purpose of poetry is the communication of thoughts or feelings in a "fancier" form of language.
Fancy? Yuck.
What is meant is not always directly stated. It may not be reasonable to jump to a conclusion and say "Bono is definitely implying Q when he says P" - because of the nature of poetry, we can't know for sure (unless you're willing to take a statement from stage more as prose, which is how I'd actually be inclined to take it, given what I know of Bono.)
I think what Bono says on stage is prose. Not many people can write poetry on the fly--even people who can make great impromptu speeches, like Bono.
But when a poet speaks in prose, you can be sure he means exactly what he says. If he wanted to say something else, he'd say it. If he wanted to draw your mind to unrelated differences (however commonly implied), he'd actually do it. Bono didn't.
Regarding your comment that we've known this about Bono for 25 years - you missed my point completely. I'm talking about someone who is not familiar with Bono at all, but just knows what he was told by the 60 Minutes broadcast, or what he knows on the surface from recently becoming a semi-fan of U2 who was interested enough to attend a concert.
Well, if they played any snippet from a U2 song, it should be obvious he's a poet. That's all my "we've known for 25 years" comment was about. He's a poet.
I'm not saying we've known about his theological convictions for that long. I sure haven't. And I doubt I would have even if I'd listened to the band from
Boy onwards. But anyone who knows U2 knows he's a poet. Anyone at a U2 concert should know this. Unless you think Bono should operate under the delusion that people at his concert don't know this much about him, I don't see how I missed the point. I only said the 25-years thing about him being a poet.
And, as I said, a good poet means exactly what he says (no more, no less) when he speaks the easier-to-construct sentences of prose.
