Salman Rushdie, St. Valentine and the Birds : The holy executioners twinned love and death on this day, but the sparrows still choose mates and treat saint and killer alike.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, this was a day for love and lover, the erotic festival in the middle of the month of Februta Juno, goddess of the “Fever of Love.” If the chooser hesitated, lots were cast and “Be mine” meant simply, “Let’s do as the birds do, my love.” For the 14th of February was also in ancient times held to be the day, as Chaucer tells us, “When ev’ry fowl cometh to choose her mate,” and it still is, or is said to be. (Watch the bird-feeder for the latest news.)

Not so among human populations, however, for in more modern times, over the last 17 or 18 centuries, say, it has become a day of executions, the overwhelming of profane passions by holy ones being a distinguishing mark of the higher civilizations.

This marriage of Death and Eros began with the execution of St. Valentine himself, a miracle-working priest of the Christian cult in Rome--this one rumored have a special gift for helping physically handicapped young girls, but not for that reason alone condemned to die on the 14th of February in 270 A.D. by Claudius II, also known as Claudius the Goth. “Be mine,” said Claudius, uttering the traditional mating call on this traditional day of lovers, as he saw to it that Valentine was, with Gothic love, clubbed to a pulp and then beheaded, thereby linking forever the saint-elect’s suffering to the lovemaking of the birds.

Whereupon more Valentines appeared--and Valentinas, too, and were in due course lovingly dispatched to sacred realms, leaving their bodily parts behind to become collectors’ items, not least their sacrificed hearts, giving rise to the phrase, first as liturgy among the holy executioners then spreading more generally to the population, “Be my Valentine.”

A beautiful phrase, stamped still on transfixed and martyred hearts passed about as gifts on this day, some meant to be eaten, others to be hung about the neck or ankle, and if it were not for the continuing incivility of the birds, seen by some as downright satanic, “Be My Valentine” might well have achieved that purity of phrase so sought after by the gods’ chosen ones in their sacred verses. But, as it is, this ritual love call of the holy executioners to their beloved victims has, by association with the birds, become tainted with, at best, chirpy frivolity and, at worst, the aura of dirty joke, one bordering on necrophilia.

And so, over the years, St. Valentines have come and gone, mostly gone, and their impassioned antagonists, the executioners, with them (though more handsomely entombed, their bodily remains having little or no market value among the relic merchants).

The birds meanwhile have carried on as usual, punctuating their sacrilege with their decorative droppings on the grand tombs of the executioners, comic Valentines of a sort, and on all the lesser tombs as well, birds on the whole taking little notice of the finer points of human history, especially when consumed with sexual ardor, nor distinguishing clearly between lovers and haters.

It is not at all surprising, then, that on such a day of love, death and bird droppings, it is the comic Valentine that has become in our time the most popular and appropriate form of sentimental exchange, perhaps as an attempt to ward off the direr consequences of this day by denying the sweeter one, an ancient form of religious magic, alas, long since discredited, especially as not all recipients share the same sense of humor.

This unhappy principle of the human condition was grimly reaffirmed just a half-decade ago today, when, in response to the writer Salman Rushdie’s witty comic Valentine, sent to the world in love, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini replied, in holy loathing, with a more traditional one of his own. “Be mine,” said his Valentine’s Day fatwa, and legions of sacred executioners were let loose upon the world, where they roam, their hearts pierced by the barbed love of death, to this day.

Still, the writer’s would-be executioner is himself today entombed and suffering the desecrations of the irreverent and lusty birds, while the writer, though not free from the dead man’s wrath, has gratefully not yet been sanctified (It is a dreadful thing to be a saint, as all Valentines have come to know.) and indeed enjoys a life enriched by love and worldwide admiration for his delicious comic Valentines, still in his power to compose.

So let us celebrate this Valentine’s Day of 1994, then, in such comic and loving spirit, and in the spirit of the enraptured birds, and of the birds’ love-billets, dropped in their excitement on the tombs of the world’s executioners; in short, dearly beloved, let us today, as the birds do, do.