"If there's any comfort at all with this horrific explosion, it was that the rescuers told me that not one miner suffered. It was so instantaneous," Gov. Joe Manchin said. "If that's the only comfort you can get out of something, that's pretty pathetic."
–Weirton Daily Times
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.
––Philip Larkin
