FALL

     after Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling from the trees
in dying gardens far above us; as if their slow
free-fall was the sky declining.

And tonight, this heavy earth is falling away
from all the other stars, drawing into silence.
We are all falling now.  My hand, my heart,
stall and drift in darkness, see-sawing down.

And we still believe there is one who sifts and holds
the leaves, the lives, of all those softly falling.

-- Robin Robertson
New British Poetry edited by Don Paterson & Charles Simic