ALL prayer holds tension. Prayer is always moving between copious expression and quiet, between the impulse to comprehend and a sense of wonder that is also reverent. Before the Divine, the All-Incomparable, the tongue cannot put on airs.

If religious institutions are antagonistic towards poetry, it is because they forget that it is also a kind of prayer. “I am knocking at Your door/and cannot turn away” Chairil Anwar wrote in his most re