Rudra, the storm, the howling, red, wild one,
Quiver of killer lightning, dealer of diseases,
And miraculous recoveries, nature, listen:
I would have preferred a world without you.
Being of your world, I could not imagine
Any without a nature like yours, the weapons
And parasites, the natural disasters, but
I could imagine that what was nature could
Have been unnatural, somehow, somewhere.
I knew a long time ago the whole universe,
For which, in some clever little rhetorical way
Or another, metalepsis, twikent, you stand,
Was a scam, and skeptical empiricism only
The forensics of the grift, ultimately
Unsatisfactory, as most forensic science is.
The whole of experience is double-sided
And multi-limbed and nonsensical, but no
Rebel could ever arise and fall in combat
With it, no snake or morning star who wasn't
Just another part of it, just another trick.
Still you doled out your arrows and gifts,
Your slaughter, shame, and holy beverages,
And those who never praised or prayed
To you, praised and prayed for mercy to you
By another name, equally severe and sweet.
I addressed you from this precipice because
I knew I had rebelled by refusing to abide
By the inevitable and must inevitably go
Along with all those also begging for mercy
And those who played at serving you humbly
As your priests and charioteers. The costs
Of service and defiance alike are erasure
And loss, even of you, of all of you, nature,
But there's a special spite reserved
For those who disavow the beauty of you,
The necessity of the rules. I wanted you
To know I am one of those and I never, never,
Although I too am a part of you, wanted you.
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