India, April 10 -- There is a moment near the end of Baz Luhrmann's EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, released in February, in which Bono's voice arrives over the closing credits like a man leaning in to settle something.

He isn't singing. He is doing what he does at his best and his worst: declaiming.

The poem is American David, written by Bono, a lifelong fan, in 1995. In its EPiC incarnation, it runs to less than a minute. "Elvis / white trash," it begins. "Elvis / the Memphis flash." What follows is a catalogue of contradictions: a man shooting televisions and reading Corinthians, a man who was godlike and broken, electric and earthbound.

The original poem had problems (including a racial slur and offensive slang) that the film wisel...