I was recently speaking to a friend who is an operatic singer about the power of music and lyrics together. She surprised me by sharing that her passion was singularly for song, and that lyrics and poetry in particular held less interest—only melody had the power to truly move her. As a musician, I have always understood music and verse to be at their best when living in a symbiotic relationship, co-existing, supporting, and growing alongside one another. Every musical theatre composer duo, like Comden and Green or Rodgers and Hammerstein, have their own process about lyrics or music coming first but with both being equally essential. And yet, there can also be great beauty in hearing harmony with no words or a lyrical poem that can stand on its own two feet without melody.

While 58 of our 150 psalms begin with the words Mizmor l’David (a song of David), as far as we know, most of our poetic liturgical and biblical texts were written without one specific melody in mind. Poetry on its own is a puzzle to be solved, a riddle to be unraveled, not always with the help of music to guide us in the words unlocking. I encountered the following poem by Israeli writer Almog Behar during the pandemic and loved the idea of receiving a poem from someone else to make one’s own, especially during a time of increased isolation. I encourage you to explore the writing of other talented Israeli poets, such as Yehuda Amichai, Navit Barel, Natan Alterman, Hayim Nachman Bialik, and Dahlia Ravikovitch, and I hope you enjoy Behar’s piece below.

— Cantor Emma Lutz

Take This Poem and Copy It
by Almog Behar (2008)
Take this poem and copy it in your handwriting on a piece of paper and insert words from your soul between the words your hands copied. And notice the additions made by the words from your hands and the subtractions made by punctuation, the spaces and the lines which are broken within your life.
Take this poem and copy it a thousand times and distribute it to people on the city’s main street. And say to them I wrote this poem this is a poem I wrote this is a poem I wrote this I wrote this poem I wrote this I wrote this I wrote.
Take this poem and put it in an envelope and send it to the one your heart desires and include a short letter with it. And before you send it change its title and at the end add rhymes of your own. Sweeten the bitter and enrich the spare and bridge the cracked and simplify the clumsy and enliven the dead and square the truth. A person could take many poems and make them his.
Take this very poem and make only this one yours for even though it has nothing special which ignites your desire to make it yours it also has no possessiveness of the kind which says a person’s poems are their property and theirs only and you have no right to meddle or ask anything of them but this is a poem which asks you to meddle with it to erase and to add and it is given to you freely for free ready to be changed by your hands.
Take this poem and make it yours and sign your name on it and erase the previous name but remember it and remember that every word is poetry is the offspring of poetry and poetry is the poetry of many not one. And someone after you will take your poem and make it theirs and command those after their children of poets to take this poem and copy it on a piece of paper and make it yours in your handwriting.