For decades, a certain photograph--I don't know who took the picture--has been lodged in my mind of an ash-smeared, half-naked, crazed-looking man peering through a thicket of brambles in what might be called The Wilderness of No God. He looks tragically alone, bereft, cut loose from the comforting anchors of religious faith, and yet he seems surprisingly tranquil. In this collection, I have transcribed the poems--I think of them as songs--which...