November is in its last week, and December is fast approaching bringing with it my beloved cold winter months, which, by the way, is perhaps the main reason why I so much love this time of the year—of course, in addition to the wonderful colors of fall and the magic of the falling leaves. This very morning I was just thinking about how, in many respects, the world around us seems to be falling apart as leaves fall in autumn, and everything seems on the verge of a spectacular implosion. This immediately brought to my mind a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke titled “Autumn,” which I searched for on Google—instead of in my overcrowded library—and quickly found. In the poem, however, the twilight feeling is tempered by the surrender to the Divine contained in the last two lines:
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 other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
Here is the short poem in both the original French and an English translation (by A. Poulin):
Sur le soupir de l’amie
toute la nuit se soulève,
une caresse brève
parcourt le ciel ébloui.
C’est comme si dans l’univers
une force élémentaire
redevenait la mère
de tout amour qui se perd.
The whole night rests
upon a lover’s sigh,
a brief caress
crosses the dazzled sky.
As if in the universe
an elemental power
again became the mother
of all love being lost.
What a gem, isn’t it? Thanks, Fall, for yet another wonderful gift! As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for the above-mentioned Google search for Rilke’s “Autumn,” I probably would never have known about this little masterpiece. Even though we all know that nothing happens by chance. Never has, never will. Happy Thanksgiving Week!
