“It's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, that prayer has dominion.”

What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. God laughs, wails, kills, sets us on fire, and then leaves us in the middle of the way, charred embers.
And I rejoice to feel between my temples, in the flicker of an eyelid, the beginning and the end of the world.
I condense into a lightning moment the seeding, sprouting, blossoming, fructifying, and the disappearance of every tree, animal, man, star, and god.
All Earth is a seed planted in the coils of my mind. Whatever struggles for numberless years to unfold and fructify in the dark womb of matter bursts in my head like a small and silent lightning flash.
Ah! let us gaze intently on this lightning flash, let us hold it for a moment, let us arrange it into human speech.
Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling.

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

Source: Ulysses

"El mismo lobo tiene momentos de debilidad, en que se pone del lado del cordero y piensa: Ojalá que huya."
Guirnaldas con amores, 1959.

Variant: There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?