The Explosion
The Explosion - meaning Summary
Comfort Amid Sudden Loss
The poem sketches a mining community’s ordinary morning and the abrupt awareness of an explosion’s dead. Daily gestures—men walking, a boy bringing lark’s eggs, animals pausing—frame a sudden tremor and a communal glance toward loss. For a moment survivors imagine the dead "larger than in life," golden and comforting, as if already at ease in God’s house. The vision mixes mundane detail with consolatory afterlife imagery.
Read Complete AnalysesOn the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead: In thesun the slagheap slept. Down the lane came men in pitboots Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke Shouldering off the freshened silence. One chased after rabbits; lost them; Came back with a nest of lark's eggs; Showed them; lodged them in the grasses. So they passed in beards and moleskins Fathers brothers nicknames laughter Through the tall gates standing open. At noon there came a tremor; cows Stopped chewing for a second; sun Scarfed as in a heat-haze dimmed. The dead go on before us they Are sitting in God's house in comfort We shall see them face to face-- plian as lettering in the chapels It was said and for a second Wives saw men of the explosion Larger than in life they managed-- Gold as on a coin or walking Somehow from the sun towards them One showing the eggs unbroken.
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