Last week on Valentine’s Day, the phrase “a valentine for Palestine,” appeared in my mind as a title for a poem, but I had no idea how to approach such a poem. A few days later it occurred to me there would be no address to send such a poem to, just blasted apart buildings, so I began there.
I will have to fold three ways the little pink envelope to get it through the cracks in the rubble where your home used to be. To whom I send it I do not know but there must be a whom not an idea, a person with a name, who breathes and suffers, not in the abstract but along living, individual nerves. So many of you are children that this becomes an uncles valentine full of protective wishes slipped through the grey lines of grey thoughts adults make in theoretical air where your face disappears. Or maybe I should make it into a paper airplane send it up against the drones quad copters and screaming F-16's, do something useful with this little, red human heart.
Such a beautiful poem, Rob. It is tone-perfect, and heart-breaking. The poem's language and expression--the paper valentine-- becomes one of those kites the Palestinian children play with--or used to play with. Soaring over the destruction, the death, the despair. Beautiful to catch the rhyming between valentine and Palestine.
Wow. That is so perfect.