Contents
Part I
Buddha Reveals the Apocalypse to the Cowboy
Evening Lounge
The Path
The Ten Thousand
A Dream of Emptiness
Tsunami
Leaves
Walking with Snakes
A Monk’s Ode to Guan Yin
Guan Yin’s Treatise on Compassion
Part II
Damascus
Flying
If You Tell
The Ancestors Speak to the Cowboy
Interpretation of Tongues
The Ancestors Explain How Envy Grew
Scapegoat
Elegy for the Appaloosa’s Mother
Against Forgiveness
The Government of Nature
Part III
For James
The Pantry
Germany, in the Fifties
In the Park with My Grandchildren
Remember
At Lake Montebello with James
Scrapple
When My Heart Failed
In Raleigh’s Brownstone Hotel
On Hearing Beethoven’s Moonlight
Looking Up from the Naked Bed
The Touched
The Untouched
In Good Samaritan Hospital
Driving South from Salem
With My Family at Dinner on Easter Sunday
Evensong at Christ Church
Washing the Car with My Father
Petunias
Cold Mountain
Part IV
Passing through Indian Territory
Predators
Weeping Willow
1963
Drowning
A Nightmare
To Those Who Would Awaken
The One Song of He Nan Monastery
Notes
Acknowledgments