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“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau
Happiness is fleeting. Angst, wretchedness, blehringitis- they are more enduring. Happiness is the butterfly that comes to sit on your shoulder when you’re too immersed in other things to notice, sometimes, there’s a flurry of them and space on your shoulder is more coveted than London property, but the butterfly is winged, and away it often does fly. I’ve had a butterfly come sit on my shoulder, no doubt it was over fed by all the birthday hullabaloo (une grande merci to everybody who made me feel so very special) but while the butterfly is force fed antacids, I found deep in the recesses of my paper jungle, these hastily scribbled lines, ‘Il pleur sur ma Coeur comme Il pleur sur la ville’ (It rains in my heart like it rains over the town) and I’m reminded that it isn’t always sunshine and serenades, often it’s a sense of loss and poetry.
Il Pleure dans mon Coeur
Paul Verlaine
Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénêtre mon coeur?
O bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un coeur qui s’ennuie,
O le chant de la pluie!
Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s’écoeure.
Quoi! nulle trahison?
Ce deuil est sans raison.
C’est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi,
Sans amour et sans haine,
Mon coeur a tant de peine.
I’d love to take credit for the translation below, but it’s a googled find. All gushing praise to be forwarded there. It’s a good translation, although it does over emphasise rhyme, compromising on the meaning in parts, reminding again why the French say that reading translated poetry is like kissing another man’s bride through a veil, but in the wake of us all not being polyglots, it is adequate:
It rains in my heart
as on a town
pours down longings that start
to reign in my heart!
Oh soft ringing of rain
poured on earth, eave and pane, –
for poor heart feeling pain, –
oh the ringing of rain!
It rains without reason
in this heart fears have lease on.
What? – no season for treason?
Do I grieve without reason?
What most hurts me, I wait
‘Why’ not knowing, sad fate,
without love, without hate, …
On my heart what a weight!
7 replies on “>It rains in my heart, It rains an appreciation for sunshine in my heart”
>…it’s been so long since this post, I’m feeling rather sheepish (excuse the pun) about replying to all your comments but anyways,
nooj, 🙂 see sometimes the butterfly is there and we know it and that’s happiness too…
mj, it is a sad sort of poem…It’s a bit too late for me to ask what the other poem was 😛
azra, that is such a lovely quote sb7nallah!so much symblosim there.
notorious, ahlain! may the butterfly land soon and stay long iA!
kimya, 🙂 merci, glad you enjoyed it.
byteofcoffe, 🙂 kl sana w inti tayyiba iA! Eid was lovely, hope you’re enjoying it too!
>”Happiness is the butterfly that comes to sit on your shoulder when you’re too immersed in other things to notice, sometimes, there’s a flurry of them and space on your shoulder is more coveted than London property, but the butterfly is winged, and away it often does fly.”
Loved this 🙂
Kil 3am o enty b5yr Khadija! Hope you have a great day tomorrow 😀
>beautiful to read 🙂
i sound sadistic? nah, love the rain reference… can almost smell it!
>hello ,, u’ve got a lovely blog
love the post alot ,,
I’ll be waiting for the butterfly to land on my shoulder
>I love French and everything about France except the people 🙂
Here’s a quote from one of my favourite movies:
Catherine: Look at you, you’re sad, AGAIN…you’re like a big black hole…
Francis: What? I just walked in…I didn’t say anything…
Catherine: Listen, when I was a little girl I would spend hours running around, chasing after lady bugs. Eventually I’d get tired, give up and fall asleep on the grass. And when I woke up, they were crawling all over me.
Francis: So?
Catherine: So, go work on your house and FORGET ABOUT IT…
(Francis is remodeling her house, but the house is a metaphor and symbolic of her remodeling her life)
>this poem is making me 🙁
second one i read tonight that made me sad
>”without love, without hate”
nothingness has the potential to be enjoyed
saaleha had a french status the other day
something about hair on soup. what a delicate finely expressed language. too bad about the nation :P.
hmmm yes. happiness is sometimes like a butterfly. but this morning i woke up giggling. and i was sober. happiness can be much more, i think.
viva impulsive blogging!