Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

I recently mentioned a task I gave to my students: to write a poem of contentedness. It seemed a nearly impossible task. Why was that? Probably because contentment itself feels like it’s nearly impossible to achieve. When was the last time you felt it? Ask yourself. Just truly content. How long did it last? What were you doing when you last felt content?

The questions I’m posing almost feel dangerous to me. Dangerous in that in their asking, there’s room for our realization that we have not been content or felt content in some time. Even if you have enough, whatever enough means, you may not feel like that’s true. We certainly aren’t wired for satiety.

Just a few days ago, I got an email from my host sister during my visit to Ukraine in the nineties. I couldn’t believe it. I had been searching for her for years, but to no avail. And here she was, in my inbox like some kind of miraculous good fortune. We haven’t seen each other in 30 years and here we were catching up over email about the jellyfish in the Black Sea, and how young we were, how much fun we had at the discos in Kaniv. And now, she’s experiencing one of the hardest times of her life, worried each day she may not make it home, or where a bomb will land. She lives in Kyiv now with her husband and our emails careen from old good memories to the terror of her current situation.

I bring this up, because I was having a lot of stress on the day that I received that email. I had family members who were sick, the pandemic continues, I kept feeling like I was letting people down by not responding to every email or request as fast as I could, or even at all. I was feeling low and suffering in that small way I’m sure many of you recognize.

Then came this email from Valya. And I started to cry. I had been so worried about her. And in our exchange, in the simple discussions of our elders–her father who passed away–my grandmother who is still alive–there was also the intense awareness of the state of war in which she was living. Through this exchange, I was able to remember my own gratitude. I could be grateful for my life again. But, how could any of us find contentment in the midst of war?

Then, I thought of this poem by the Turkish poet, Rüştü Onur. Onur lived his short life through the immense turmoil of the Great Depression and the start of World War Two, and saw the very worst of humanity and still, somehow, by whatever poetry god gives us grace, managed to write this poem praising the world. The title in Turkish, translated as “Contentment” in English, is “Memnuniyet.”

Contentment
by Rüştü Onur
translated by Hüseyin Alhas and Ulaş Özgün

No harm would I pose
To the bee in its hive
To the bird in its nest;
I live in my own world
Under my hat.
It is my contentment that makes
Me smile without reason on the streets;
It is my heart,
The source of this raving frenzy.
I am not silent, I can’t keep quiet
Like the dead beneath the dirt
In the midst of this sweet world.

"Contentment" by Rüştü Onur, translated from the Turkish by Hüseyin Alhas and Ulaş Özgün. Used by permission of the translators.