SAINT VALENTINE

                    Who was this Valentine whom we today
                    Will celebrate with posies and with sweets?
                    Earned he sainthood the hard or easy way?
                    I’ll do a Wiki check on all his feats . . .

                   That’s done, and I am sad now to report
                   He was a martyr of the cruelest kind,
                   Whose death was nasty, brutish, but not short,
                   From punishments maliciously designed.

                  How he became the patron of romance
                  Bedecked in February’s hothouse flowers
                  Is surely not apparent at first glance:
                  No smiling visage; rather one that lours.

                       Let’s choose some other saint, some other day
                       And be it in the merry month of May.

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