Cold cliffs, more beautiful the deeper you enter–
Yet no one travels this road.
White clouds idle about the tall crags;
On the green peak a single monkey wails.
What other companions do I need?
I grow old doing as I please.
Though face and form alter with the years,
I hold fast to the pearl of the mind.
translated by Burton Watson
Yes yes. Whoever he was, and however many poets he may have been, there’s a magical consistency to the Han Shan poems.
In Seaton’s book, poem # XX ends with–
I search a stream that has no source.
The spring dried up, but the stream water’s still flowing.