"Roses are red/Violets are blue/Oh my, lump in the bed/How I've missed you," starts the romantic poem by President George W. Bush written to his wife, Laura Bush.
In a rare disclosure, the first lady shared her husband's mushy sentiment with a crowd assembled at the Library of Congress for the National Book Festival in Washington last weekend.
The president wrote the private love letter to his wife while she was away on her solo trip to Europe.
"President Bush is a great leader and a husband, but I bet you didn't know he is also quite the poet," Laura Bush said at a gala event Friday to kick off the celebration of good writing, according to Canada's National Post. "Upon returning home last night from my long trip I found a lovely poem waiting there for me."
With the president in the room, the first lady proceeded to recite it.
"Roses are redder/Bluer am I/Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy," it continues in a reference to the wet one French President Jacques Chirac planted on Mrs. Bush's hand as she entered the Elysee presidential palace in Paris last week. The first lady was in France to mark the return of the United States to UNESCO, which is based in Paris.
The French kiss nabbed front-page headlines around the world.
"Chirac met her at her car and elaborately kissed her hand in greeting, at a time when the French and U.S. governments remain divided over the future of Iraq," reported the Washington Post.
The New York Post interpreted the encounter quite differently with its headline: "Damsel in Distress: Laura braves weasel kiss."
The cover of the New York Post, Sept. 30, 2003. |
"Grim-faced first lady Laura Bush looks as if she'd rather be anywhere else in the world yesterday as French President Jacques Chirac takes a stab at chivalry by planting a kiss on her hand," the paper reported.
President Bush even poked fun at the incident.
"Speaking about Laura, she just got back from a sensitive diplomatic mission – you probably saw the picture in the newspaper," Bush quipped at a fund-raiser in Milwaukee, Wis., Friday. "But I'm proud that she represented our country, because she does it with such class."
The love letter continued with a reference to a mishap in which the couple's dog got dropped on the tarmac while Mrs. Bush was handing him to her husband.
"The dogs and the cat, they missed you too/Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe/The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier/Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier."
Bush passes through 'side boys' after successful trap on USS Lincoln |
The Canadian daily solicited critiques of the president's poetry from literary experts, who didn't hold any punches.
"I am surprised she would make it public," remarked Richard Hoffpauir, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. "As a little gesture between a husband and wife it is fine. But I can't speak to its literary merits because it is not literature. It does not come anywhere near. It is not even up to the standard of Hallmark. I studied the British Romantic Movement – early 19th century – Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron. This is just sentiment and flabby sentiment at best."
"It's kind of fun doggerel," Russell Brown, former editorial director of poetry at McClelland and Stewart, a book supply company in Toronto, told the paper. "There is a sort of playfulness there – more than I thought George Bush was capable of."