you must open your eyes

İstanbul tulip festival 2009, İstanbul lale festivali, Pentax K10d, Hidiv Kasrı

The question

Love, a question
has destroyed you.

I have come back to you
from thorny uncertainty.

I want you straight as
the sword or the road.

But you insist
on keeping a nook
of shadow that I do not want.

My love,
understand me,
I love all of you,
from eyes to feet, to toenails,
inside,
all the brightness, which you kept.

It is I, my love,
who knocks at your door.
It is not the ghost, it is not
the one who once stopped
at your window.
I knock down the door:
I enter your life:
I come to live in your soul:
you cannot cope with me.

You must open door to door,
you must obey me,
you must open your eyes
so that I may search in them,
you must see how I walk
with heavy steps
along all the roads
that, blind, were waiting for me.

Do not fear,
I am yours,
but
I am not the passenger or the beggar,
I am your master,
the one you were waiting for,
and now I enter
your life,
no more to leave it,
love, love, love,
but to stay.

Pablo Neruda

You start dying slowly if you do not travel,

Istanbul Tulip Festival, İstanbul, Pentax K10d

You start dying slowly

You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly
When you kill your self-esteem;
When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly
If you do not change your life
when you are not satisfied with your job,
or with your love,
I you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,
If you do not go after a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice…

Pablo Neruda

Love, a question has destroyed you. You must open your eyes

tulips, istanbul tulip festival, istanbul, pentax k10d

The question

Love, a question
has destroyed you.

I have come back to you
from thorny uncertainty.

I want you straight as
the sword or the road.

But you insist
on keeping a nook
of shadow that I do not want.

My love,
understand me,
I love all of you,
from eyes to feet, to toenails,
inside,
all the brightness, which you kept.

It is I, my love,
who knocks at your door.
It is not the ghost, it is not
the one who once stopped
at your window.
I knock down the door:
I enter your life:
I come to live in your soul:
you cannot cope with me.

You must open door to door,
you must obey me,
you must open your eyes
so that I may search in them,
you must see how I walk
with heavy steps
along all the roads
that, blind, were waiting for me.

Do not fear,
I am yours,
but
I am not the passenger or the beggar,
I am your master,
the one you were waiting for,
and now I enter
your life,
no more to leave it,
love, love, love,
but to stay.

Pablo Neruda

Grand bazaar, istanbul

Grand bazaar, istanbul, pentax k10d

.

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”

Pablo Neruda

Speedy boat in Bosphorus

Bosphorus, Boğaziçi, İstanbul, Pentax K10d

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

Pablo Neruda

Bosphorus in clouds

Bosphorus, Boğaziçin, Üsküdar, İstanbul, Pentax K10d

“Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.”

Pablo Neruda

gift shop, Grand Bazaar

Grand Bazaar, İstanbul, Pentax K10d

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

Pablo Neruda

boat restaurants

fishers in Eminonu and Galata Tower in backgroud, İstanbul, Pentax K10d

“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”

Pablo Neruda

Eminönü port, İstanbul

Eminönü port, İstanbul, Pentax K10d

“I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain dark things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda

Moda port in old frame

Moda port, Kadikoy

Love
What’s wrong with you, with us,
what’s happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What’s wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?

Pablo Neruda