The speaker is following news reports about Guiuan, a place in the Philippines hit by a devastating storm, without understanding the Tagalog around it. Only one word stands out: the English "landfall." The poem lets that word keep resurfacing, each time followed by a list of what happened there: roofs torn off, columns toppled, a wall of water, a church flattened, and nearly every structure damaged.
The poem also reminds us that Guiuan has a long history, as a place where Magellan landed and where Americans came ashore in the Second World War. Those earlier landfalls were arrivals by outsiders. This one is something else.
The tone is restrained and almost reportorial, which makes the details hit harder. The speaker seems distant, caught between not understanding the language and understanding the damage. At the end, "landfall" splits into "land" and "fall," and the technical term becomes a picture of ground and lives giving way.