• avaplutya — leaping down
  Ava (down) + √plu, 'to jump.' The same root as 'plava' (boat). Rukmī jumps down to swim a sea he cannot cross — toward the One who is Himself the bridge.
• jighāṁsayā — with the desire to kill
  Desiderative of √han + instrumental. 'With kill-want.' One of the seven kinds of attachment-to-Kṛṣṇa in bhakti-rasa-śāstra is dveṣa — hostility. Rukmī manifests it pure. Even this connects him to the Lord (cf. Śiśupāla's mokṣa).
• pataṅgaḥ — a bird (or: a moth)
  Pataṅga — literally 'flying thing.' The same word for moth in the famous 'pataṅgo yathā' image (Kaṭha Up.). Rukmī flying at Kṛṣṇa is the moth-image: cannot stop, must burn.
• pāvakam — the wind (or, by another reading, the fire)
  Pāvaka literally 'the purifier' — usually Agni. Most commentators here render 'wind,' but the resonance with fire (the moth's destination) is unmissable. Either way, Rukmī is rushing into what consumes.
• kruddhaḥ — furious
  From √krudh. Krodha is one of the six enemies of the self (kāma, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, mātsarya). Rukmī arrives at Kṛṣṇa armored in all six — yet even so, will not be killed, because Kṛṣṇa is also the merciful one.

Like a moth not turning back even as its wings are singed, Rukmī leaps from his chariot sword-in-hand and runs at Kṛṣṇa as a bird flies into wind. There is something almost devotional in his refusal to stop — but without surrender, the same intensity that could be prema becomes only momentum toward annihilation.