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One moment in Valdivia
when the ground under him rocked
he learnt that land also is a sea.

One moment is enough:
no security can hold.
From high to low,
all that was immutable shifts.

Along the coast, in Quiriquina,
at Concepcion, it was as though
a fleet had been wrecked – timbers
that were roofs, furniture, smashed,
strewn on the beach, storehouses
burst open, merchandise scattered,
rocks, even rocks, torn from the deep.

Far from home
the ground moving under him
like the Beagle in a cross ripple,
or more like ice, thin ice, that bends
...