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Falling is as universal a predicament as is the law of gravity. Illness, love, and sleep come to people by falling. The girls’ hands once more lift them from their falling. That there is one to hold this falling infinitely gently in his hands addresses people in their inmost human predicament. There is an inward falling to each thing. In the time of growth, as in one’s childhood, or as in a plant’s growth during spring and into summer, falling seems to be effectively countered, and yet growth and becoming are only setting the stage for a falling that is never to cease as each thing falls to the ground, falls into the mineral earth, and falls through the density of the earth as long as there is time. “If a tree blossoms,” Rilke writes in 1915, “death blossoms in it as well”. Matter comes about through falling.