Poems for the start of Autumn

Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

Autumn Movement by Carl Sandurg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper

sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes,

new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind,

and the old things go, not one lasts.