Dreamed lake? Dreamed river?

And here is the famous Ve’ulai.

It is a poem written by Rachel (1890-1931).

Also known as Rachel Blaustein, or Rachel Bluwstein, Rachel is often referred to as the national poet of Israel, even though she was born in Russia and technically she never set foot in Israel. Although she emigrated to Palestine, she did not live to see the new state's foundation in 1948.

She wrote her early works in Russian. She grew up speaking Yiddish. The works of her maturity – if one can use this word about somebody who died at forty – are in Hebrew. She knew hardship, rejection and illness.

Rachel’s poetry records the life of hard work and idealism of the early Zionists in Palestine. It also deals with her own sense of displacement, loss and unfulfilled dreams. Although she deals with some of the deepest questions of life and death, those who know her and her language tell us that she uses simple, conversational Hebrew.

Lake Kinneret – the Sea of Galilee – features recurrently in Rachel’s work. She loved it. She asked to be buried near it – in a poem, as a matter of fact: If fate decrees. Upon her death, her friends and followers complied with her wishes.

I discovered Rachel before I turned twenty and fell in love with her poetry, first in Spanish translations. I set three of her poems for choir in 1976.

Why am I saying all this here and not, for example, in my composer’s blog? Read on.

I have been keenly aware of Rachel and her work lately. Some aspects of her life make her a sympathetic companion to think of. In particular, Rachel’s best-known poem, Ve’ulai, has been haunting me in the context of thinking about my much longed-for Redesdale home.

Although I have not been assiduous, I have written a fair amount in this blog about life by the Rede. Rachel uses fewer words, but she expresses better the kind of feeling I have struggled to convey.

Ve’ulai is not one of the poems I set in 1976; that would have been redundant, since there was already a beautiful setting of it by Yehuda Sharet. I wrote an arrangement of Sharet's song in 1983 and a reconstruction of that arrangement this year – just completed. Another humble homage to Rachel, and another way to say “I love you” to the place and the people I think of so obsessively.

In more than one way, the land of my memories and (literally) dreams has rejected me. Recent developments suggest that I may not be setting foot on that place again. My current feelings, therefore, are more turbulent about my old Rede than Rachel's about her Kinneret. But there is no doubting that a piece of me will always stay on Redesdale

Or, as Rachel puts it:

If fate decrees
that I should live far from your space
- I shall return, Kinneret, 
to lie in your resting place!

Ve'ulai (And Maybe) 
a poem by Rachel

And maybe these things never happened?

And maybe I never rose at dawn to the garden

to work it by the sweat of my brow?

And never on long and blazing days of harvest

atop a cart full of sheaves

did I raise my voice in song?

Did I never cleanse myself in the calm azure

and innocence of my Kinneret?

Oh my Kinneret! Did you exist?

Or did I dream a dream?