And I'll finish with a version of an early poem by Rilke.
I started with the first poem in this book.
It's called "Apart," and the last one's called "Fall."
And I was recently asked to write a note
about this poem for an anthology it was appearing in,
and it had--
I wrote it about four years ago and corrected the proofs, just
before 9/11, and I had to read it in New York,
about three weeks after the towers fell.
It's kind of associated in my head with that.
So I was trying to find out something
for this note for the anthology, and I
knew Rilke had written it in 1902 in Paris.
And I found out he actually wrote it
on the 11th of September.
Thank you for listening.
This is called "Fall," after Rilke.
"The leaves are falling, falling from 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 hold the leaves, the lives, of all those
softly falling."
[APPLAUSE]