Europe Shopping Mall

Europe Shopping Mall (in Turkish : Avrupa Pasajı)  has got two door

• Galatasaray door  :  through formerly England consulate  and Galatasaray High School (Galatasaray Lisesi)
• Beyoglu Fish Market door   (Beyoglu Balik Pazari)

taken with Pentax K10-D

Balat Streets with garments and linens

Balat streets with newer houses  and same scene :)

THE BROKEN SPOOL

It was evening
On black stones was written in white
Two numbers one below the other
6228
I was the only one to read it

The old friend is gone

The two of us were on the swings
Of our own silence
Apart from each other
We were swinging elbow to elbow
We stopped
Then by separate staircases
We went down to our thresholds

It was evening
We left behind us the domestic city of the evening
In one hand the stick
On which we were leaning
In the other our lost
Exhausted daylight
When the redness in the west struck us
To draw once more our faith
Sparks flew from our foreheads

It was evening
We walked
We reached
The wise evening sea
Without delay
We kneeled
And stayed there
We first set our sweating wrists free
From the iron of the handcuffs
The old friend had put on unawares
The sea was tired
Tired was the water

“Night
Night of nights
Pitch-dark night”

We half opened the door of the tired water
Without mystery
In the starlight we knew our own light
We set it apart quietly

— You have nothing in common she said
Besides your memories
— We have nothing in common
I said

Don’t I know what I learned
In this world

If memories are not lived
Lived once more
They wither and fade
Left there
All alone

How else could we be
We were silent

“Night
Night of nights
Pitch-dark night”

We didn’t look at the stars
We didn’t even listen
To the sound
Or the silence
It was as if we were shaped
In the streams of the ocean
Morning-glories were waiting for us
And water-lilies
Were waiting
To spread their fragrance

We were the rainbow dream
The simple striving
Without splendour
Of the ear-shell

We
We were the two of us
The unheard song of the sea-tulips
In the deep

Tomorrow
We were to set the world right
Together
But first let the night end

“Night
Night of nights
Pitch-dark night”

That natural
Immortal beauty
Bloomed on the thinnest of the uncanny branches

— Come let us get up we said
— Come

While from the broken spool
Of our desperate dream
Two strips of white thread
Came down
Came everywhere

Arif Damar
translated by Mina Urgan

“Kirik Makara,” Yoksulduk Dunyayi Sevdik (1988)

smooth corners of Balat Streets

Balat Streets and Red School

Private Fener College (red school) and Balat streets

Galata Tower, a la turca

ALLA TURCA

I could see you, on your lips were sticky words and you were insensitive

toward the cedar trees. You were looting the sea minarets and then leaving
them behind; the mother-of-pearl shells were aching.

In your beach bags a bit of Webster, eccentric! Marquez and
Ulysses never to be read…

As if Poseidon would appear from the waves. Excitement in your
flip-flops, blood in your napless eyes.

In your gin-induced comas you were dragging by the hair a poor old
man enamored of himself.

Orhan Alkaya
Translated by  Suat Karantay

Haghia Sophia

Textile Paradise

open bazaar from Sultanahmet streets
pentax K10D

Old Window

an old window from Eyup Sultan Mosque

Golden Horn , you are paper I am a typewriter

I love Nazim Hikmet and Golden Horn.

You are the field

I am a tractor

you are paper

I—a typewriter;

my wife, mother of my son

you are the folk-song

I—a shrill flute.

I am a night with moist breath from the south

while you are a woman strolling along the wharf

your gaze upon the lights of the opposite shore.

I am water

you—the one thirsting.

I am the one passing along the road

while you open a window

to lend me a helping hand.

You are China

I—the army of Mao-Tse-Tsung.

You are the fourteen-year-old girl

I save

from the arms of an American sailor.

You are a village.

You cling to a mountainside in Anatolia.

You are my city

at its loveliest and most poignant.

You are the cry for help—my country—

And the one rushing towards you in stride—myself.

Nazim Hikmet

door from Haydarpasa railway station

a door from Haydarpasa railway station