We must simply accept it that we are spirits,
free and rational beings, at present inhabiting an irrational universe,
and must draw the conclusion //that we are not derived from it.
We are strangers here.
We come /from somewhere else.
Nature is not the only thing //that exists.
There is ‘another world’, and that is [where we come from].
And that explains why we do not feel at home here.
A fish feels at home /in the water.
If we ‘belonged here’ we should feel at home here.
* Feel at hime means you're as comfortable as you are at home
[All //that we say about ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’],
about death and time and mutability,
all our half-amused, half-bashful attitude to our own bodies,
is quite inexplicable /on the theory //that we are simply natural creatures.
If this world is the only world, how did we come /to find its laws /either so dreadful or so comic?
If there is no straight line elsewhere, how did we discover that Nature’s line is crooked?
From Present Concerns