DENNIS MALONEY ~

 

Empty Cup

     After a painting by Erin Gafill

A small still life

of an empty cup

executed in

hues of blue and

shades of gray.

It can hold anything

or everything.

You can pour in

coffee or tea,

or you can pour in

love, gratitude,

longing, bitterness,

or disappointment.

What will you hold

in this empty cup?

How does it taste?

_______________________

Dennis Maloney

Clearing the Stream

New & Selected Poems

1975-2025

NEW BOOKS! ~

 

Steven Manuel, The Fire (New Books)

Tao Yuan-ming, Returning Home (White Pine)

Ronald Baatz, squeezing an orange on a snowy morning (Black Fig)   

Dennis Maloney, Windows (White Pine)

RYOKAN
(1758-1831)







I'm truly simple
living among trees and grasses.
Don't ask me about illusion or enlightenment.
I'm just an old man who smiles to himself.
I ford streams with these thin legs,
and carry my bag in fine weather.
Such is my life,
but the world owes me nothing.



translated by Dennis Maloney

a contemporary of William Blake and Henry David Thoreau, playmate with children, calligrapher and hermit, here is one of the finest from Ryokan and one of the finest one will ever find of the playful and dead serious discipline. It's all in the thin legs and nothing. From Longhouse we can offer you Ryokan until the cows come home — plus Dennis Maloney's even blend translations, of which the above is one, may be had from the recently released Between the Floating Mist (White Pine, wwwwhitepine.org)