love is a poem (from the sixties)

i was wrong to think i would be able to relax a little after the launch of my website. i soon realized the deadline for the Hallmark Design Competition was here, with the theme being Love. since i didn't have much time to brainstorm, i gave my ideas a first come first served kind of treatment. 

the first concept was inspired by one of my favorite love songs, Le Parapluie (the umbrella) by the great poet/singer/songwriter Georges Brassens. you can listen to it and read the lyrics here. and if you don't speak french,  it's basically about this guy who, on a rainy day, happens to have an umbrella and who accompanies a woman without one. sharing his umbrella makes him feel he is in heaven, and wish "it would rain for forty days and forty nights, like during the Flood."

so my first entry looked like this:

umbrella love

raindrops made me think about another poem i love, by one of my favorite armenian poets, Zareh Khrakhouni, about two raindrops who meet at the end of a gutter and fall in love. 

so my second entry looked like this:

raindrop love

i found translations of some of his poems here. and i was very happy that the one i was thinking about was translated! (unfortunately there are no credits on the website, so i am not able to credit the translator as i would've liked to.)

DROPS

From the roofs

From the edge of one of the many roofs

A drop of water slides down, meets another and says –

Do you know what?

Do you know what I like most about you –

You don’t look like anyone else …


From the roofs

From the numerous roofs

From the edge of these many roofs

Two drops of water – like all the other drops –

Arrowed by the same rays of the sun

Drunk with a newly opened rainbow

United like a pot of light

Satiated like a heavenly fruit

Fused – heavy

Drop to the earth as limpid tears of happiness


And one says to the other –

Do you know what? Do you know what

I would like most of all

When I drop to the earth next time?

I want to meet another one – exactly like you …

i also came accross this other poem by him about love under an umbrella, and realized he must have written it around the same time Brassens was singing about his gratitude to his umbrella (sometime in the mid-sixties).

IN THE RAIN (excerpt)

One umbrella two hearts –

Under the tapping drops

Palpitating in rhythm

With each other in the rain


One umbrella two loves –

Dripping from the edges

Like limpid teardrops


One umbrella two lives –

Just like accompanying steps

United in this common

Routine rain.

there was no poetry behind my third entry, although metaphors definitely played a role. rain made me think of clouds, and i tried to illustrate two clouds in love. kittens, raindrops, why not clouds?

so this is what my third entry looked like:

cloud love

as another beautiful song from the sixties goes: here comes the sun and i say it's alright...

happy spring!