Love for Life: Reaching out for Joy
()
About this ebook
After almost sixty years, author Max Roytenberg was fortunate enough to reclaim his ?rst love. He has been living ever since in a state of lovers delirium. His new poetry collection, Love for Life, mirrors some of his experiences. He believes he is living the ultimate escapist dream, having survived long enough, with all his faculties, to appreciate the opportunity he has been given to escape from his former life, with the love of his life, to live on a storied isle. His is a love story extended over a lifetime.
The poems in this collection offer a selection of those that have been written by Roytenberg over a period of fifty years, but the majority has been written during his sojourn in Ireland.
Roytenberg has focused on the adventures of life, its triumphs and tragedies. Love has many faces, mirrored in the multiple meanings of the title-love of partners, of self, of children, parents, teachers, nature, love of life itself. Roytenberg communicates hoping that the readers will find their own meanings in his words.
Max Roytenberg
Max Roytenberg, born and raised in Winnipeg, is a Canadian who lives in Ireland and spends some of the winter months in Arizona. An economist and businessman by trade, he and his spouse have had nine children between them and currently have eight grandchildren.
Read more from Max Roytenberg
Poetic License: Reaching out for the Courage to Speak My Truth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRehearsing How to Live: Reaching out to Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGod’S Thunder in the Sky: Reaching Out Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Love for Life
Related ebooks
U-n-iversal Vibes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems for the Heart: Love Poems and Passions Iii Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Earthly Reflections Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jade Paradigm Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassion & Peace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Knew Deep Down Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLook Inside Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Apothecary of Art: To soothe your soul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Soul Bone Aches Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrowth! Enlightenment of the Soul: Reflections of a Soul Growing Through Life's Experiences Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Road to Becoming: Rediscovering Your Life in the Not-How-I-Planned-It Moments Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Viva La Yves: Sensual Brain Food and Experiences in Thought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExpressions on a Leaf: Poetry, Verses, and Tiny Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Whisper Tells Me: My Intimate Collections Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThoughts Untethered: A Poet's Quill Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTraveling Through My Mind: Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Brief Anthology of You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Dance Through Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeautiful Ends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPainful Truths Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOpening the Circle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFull Bloom Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEchoes Ii: A Book of Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlba: Complete Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLife! the Journey of the Soul: Reflections of a Soul on Life’s Journey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecreation: An Anthology of Poetry and Short Fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSynonyms on Toast: A Collection of Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShore Pine Bonsai: And Other Poems of My Journey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems and Notes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOde to Motherhood: Poems for My Mothers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rumi: The Art of Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Weary Blues Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Love for Life
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Love for Life - Max Roytenberg
I
Looking Back
Love Song Cycle
The memory of her blue, blue eyes-
Shaded, keen and vari-hued-
Has brought me back from southern isles-
Has lured me back. Her pensive mood
Parallels the shadows’ fall,
Quivering before the hush of night-
Now dark, now light, now rippling
Across the shining eye of sight,
Now dark again-
Like jungles on a jewel-like solitary isle of spice-
Set in a sea, a Babylon astride inconstant paradise.
That subtle curve, her perfect cheek,
The skin that words cannot describe;
A cream, a rose, all women seek
That muffled pink. They send gold to bribe
Procurers wide-dispatched to find
Some oil, unguent, some powdered myrrh,
For the pallid to such beauty bind
What is in her naturally pure.
To touch that skin with gentle touch,
To know its velvet satinized
Makes not ten thousand miles too much
To realize this sensation in your mind incised.
The thought must turn to pagan lore
To seek conception of her face-
If Helen launched a thousand more
Her glance would send them thrice apace-
And more and more the world to scour-
To the slip of Chiron’s ferry boat,
Over and over to bring that power
To see her beauty across the moat
And so make the hellish caverns shine
Seeing heaven risen once again,
Causing Lucifer to cease to pine
And lift perdition from all men.
But I have gone too far and long;
Those eyes, that cheek are gone for me.
For her I am but like a song
That passes from the memory,
That glance it looks another way-
And passion-passion that burned once for me-
Is gone. Now, secret smiles that play-
The smiles that I no longer see-
Around her full and matchless mouth,
They are not meant for me to see.
The eyes that pulled me from the south
No longer search the sea for me.
I will sail the sea once more
And sail me back to southern isles,
To warmth and sun on sea and shore,
To happier climes and warmer smiles,
To sturdy timbers beneath the feet,
To voyages and typhoon squall,
To dusky skin and eyes that greet,
Across the shiny globe to crawl.
But yet the contours of her face
Are etched across each sullen sky
And in the pounding of the race
I yet perceive her blue, blue eye.
II
My love I hurried back to you again,
I wanted but to take a walk
To see a friend and perhaps talk,
But then I thought, Oh what of her!
Then rushed back under anxiety’s spur,
Parting was too painful for me just then.
I swear this is some strange disease.
I cannot be an hour from you,
I can-will-but recount you true,
I begin to worry, fret
And I see visions-Oh, my pet-
The things I see you from me seize.
I will turn a madman yet.
The town folks say- don’t you agree?
You will soon be bored with me.
Oh yes, my love, fate do not tempt,
Familiarity breeds contempt
,
Love’s surfeit the constant threat.
Do you love me still? My heart,
But you love me evermore-
Banish my fear! Do you flag in your
Devotion?-Say you love me yet my love
And I shall forget peace’s symbolic dove
That lies mangled in world apart.
Ah kiss me, kiss me then my love! Oh quickly kiss
Me once again! Now I do on your sweet hand
Implant my kiss. What of the dangers where we stand ?
Your head of hair resplendent, so fiery-curled,
Casts out my thoughts of the troubled world,
Vanishing from my mind cruel visions of lives amiss.
You are my home, my heaven-blessed
The strength behind my circled tower,
To know I’ll be with you soon, my power,
You are my future, my screen from fire,
My hope from trial, my shield from ire,
To please you, my heart, my severest test.
III
Down falls the syrup flood of night
And day recedes from off the plain
Leaving tendrils of a rosy light,
Red heralds of a summer rain.
Soon Stillness lays her quiet hand
On all the sounds that go with day
And seems, with her slow smile, the sand
Of daylight’s bustling time to stay.
Those were the times I loved you best
When all the hum of life lay dead,
When powers ceased their work to rest
And we were back to Eden led.
These times, my love, I think of you
And pass our moments through my head.
When twilight comes, I see you through
The thin black veil that hides the dead.
You come to greet me laughing then
And I can see your blue eyes shine
And I can feel you touch me, when
Suddenly I taste the wine
We drank the night that you were mine.
And suddenly, suddenly, the pain is gone.
I see us once more lying in eye-light shine
The way we did up there midst gorse and fen.
Remember, when we climbed the hill
To bid adieu the little town
And I could see your sad eyes fill.
I myself I had to