The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

We’re all falling. This hand is falling.
And look at the other one…. It’s in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitley calm, hold up all this falling.

from selected poems of Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Robert Bly.