I woke up and began my doomscrolling session on Substack and came across a note by the awesome Cate Hall with a screenshot of Rilke’s ‘Go to the Limits of Your Longing’ poem. The translation is under copyright but out of curiosity I asked Gemini and Claude to find the original German version and then translate it:

God speaks to each of us before our making, then walks in silence as the night is breaking. But the words spoken before we each begin— these words, like silver, are these:

You, sent out beyond your own senses, go to the edge of your longing; clothe me.

Grow like a fire behind all things, so that their shadows, stretched wide, may always cover me entirely.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. One must only keep going: no feeling is the furthest. Do not let yourself be severed from me.

Nearby is the land that they call life. You will recognize it by its gravity.

Give me your hand.

I know it’s become trivial to use AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini, but the fact that I can ask a tool to find a German poem, translate it into English, and then help me understand it—all from my phone—is still kind of crazy.