Poetry Thursday: Rilke, falling leaves

on


Autumn



The leaves are falling, falling as if from afar,

as if withered in the distant gardens of heaven;

with nay-saying gestures they fall.



And in the nights falls the heavy earth

from all the stars into loneliness.



We all are falling. This hand there falls.

And look at the other: it is in all of them.



And yet there is one, who holds all this

falling with infinite gentleness in his hands.




--by Rainer Maria Rilke



I am so grateful; where would we be, all of us lonely falling souls, without an infinitely gentle hand to hold us?