So what in the world’s worth anything?
Poetry is priceless (or at least that’s what they pay me).
Explaining, clearly, deeply, Love, and Duty,
what monkey-hearted men will never learn.
My poems are poems,
even if some people call them sermons.
Well, poems and sermons do share one thing:
when you read them you got to be artful.
Keep at it. Get into detail.
Don’t just claim they’re easy.
If you were to live your life like that,
a lot of funny things might happen.
Both of the above translated by J. P. Seaton in Cold Mountain Poems: Zen Poems of Han Shan, Shih Te, and Wang Fan-chih