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Love for Life: Reaching out for Joy
Love for Life: Reaching out for Joy
Love for Life: Reaching out for Joy
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Love for Life: Reaching out for Joy

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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.

LanguageEnglish
PublisheriUniverse
Release dateJan 31, 2012
ISBN9781469700465
Love for Life: Reaching out for Joy
Author

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.

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    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

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