There's turmoil and heaving of strata In the land She claimed for her own. Kahiki was land at the dawn of time, A land by Haumea mixed and tempered; Then She spread out Kahiki-ku; She kindled her fires; the flames leapt high. The Goddess covers her footprints-- The foot-marks of Goddess Pele-- She treads the path of the heavens; Swoops down and lands at Polapola. She dwells in the level island plain. Down fall the pillars of Kakihi; The wind topples over the ruins; Down tumble the sun-kissing clouds; Down sinks the blood-red eye of Heaven And big-bellied clouds that loom at sea. Pele heaves in sight at Nihoa-- That limpet stuck to Lehua's base. From famed Kaua'i to Oahu; Thence on to Mother Hina's isle; To Lana'i of Kanaloa; To Mani and, last, to Hawaii: This the route of the Woman--Pele. Then she rubs her fire-sticks to a blaze: Up flames her touchwood, kindling the heavens. Earth sees the flash of lightning, hears the boom Of thunder echoed by mountain walls-- Rocks flung in space bombard the day, Shaking the mountain to its base. The firmament sags, clings to the earth; Hawaii is lost in Her smoke, At the passion-heat of the Goddess. Down clatters the rain from the sky-- A damper this to the Goddess' fires; It rouses the wrath of Pele. Keep silence! retort not! never a word! 'Tis the voice of Pele; she's my God. The wind veers; there's far-off corruscation; The thunder wrenches heaven's gates; A sobbing of rain in the mountains, The crash of thunder and earthquake; Old tabus take flight to the ocean. Now starts up the Earth-shaker Kane, And Kane, the whirl-wind-breeder-- A tempest-whirl, o'er mountain and sea; A tempest-whirl, in heaven and on earth; A tempest-whirl, sodden with rain, The atheist and the skeptic, The scorner and unbeliever-- Powers of the under-world and the air.-- The hero Mano-ka-lani-pó, His emblem a feathery wreath-- Plume from the bird that spies and tattles, From the bird that makes proclamation, Declaring the might, the power, of my God; Out here, in the open, declare it. Proclaim the edict of silence-- A short way, a true way, this way Of Kane, of Kanaloa-- Compact this and bind in one bundle; Let Ocean then swallow the rest. A jealous flame is Pele's back: That is the law of Pele, of my God!