The Explosion
On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun 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 –
Plain 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.
I was arrested by the final gift of Larkin in The Explosion. The simplicity of this gesture transcends the squalor of the mining disaster and Larkin’s own cynical doubts about faith. For even the faithless may stop and acknowledge the healing possibility of this image. Something will endure and as in the last poem in Whitsun Weddings( ‘Arundel Tomb’) where ‘what will survive of us is love.’ ) Here Larkin’s figure holds out a promise of enduring connection, fragile as a lark’s egg yet with the delicacy and humanity which discovers the dignity in remembrance. I am reminded as I type of David’s last glimpse of his mother in David Copperfield, where as he is taken away to school, he looks back and sees his poor mother holding out the baby as a farewell gift to her beloved son. Both images capture the intimacy of lastness, and yet its immortaility too.
‘ I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked out, and she stood at the garden gate alone, holding her baby up in her arms for me to see.It was cold still weather ; and not a hair of her head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirrred, as she looked intently at me, holding up her child.
So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school- a silent presence near my bed – looking at me with the same intent face – holding up her baby.
Each time I read this, the tableau moves me to tears. The pathos of the mother’s final gesture to her son, a gesture which seems to recognise its finality. is soul deep.