by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated from German by Derrick Evans Willer

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far off,
as if orchards were dying in the distant sky;—
they fall with gestures of denial.

And tonight the heavy earth is falling,
falling from all the stars into aloneness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one: it's in them all.

And yet there is One, who in the infinite calmness
of His hands, holds up all this falling.