The Full Text of “Explosion”
The Full Text of “Explosion”
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“Explosion” Introduction
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Vivimarie VanderPoorten's "Explosion" recounts the 1996 Central Bank suicide bombing in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a notorious terrorist attack perpetrated during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The poem's grim imagery, which focuses on the death and dismemberment of random civilians, evokes the senseless horror of that day's violence. The poem as a whole implicitly criticizes the targeting of civilians in wartime, and depicts how suddenly life can end even in seemingly ordinary circumstances. "Explosion" appears in VanderPoorten's 2007 collection Nothing Prepares You.
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“Explosion” Summary
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On the day of the Central Bank bombing, for what felt like a long moment, time itself seemed to be in shock. All the ordinary noises that accompany a weekday morning in the city, including the cries of crows, joined into a single sound of bombs exploding, scattering fire and destruction all around.
Some people were killed; others were blinded. Retired folks, who had come to the bank to pick up their savings, were flattened beneath falling bricks and glass. The vegetable vendor near the bank had their hands sliced off like the ends of cucumbers. Sari-wearing ladies found themselves holding their own eyeballs, and blood spewed all over the streets, obliterating the memories of those who were killed.
From the smashed window of a banged-up car with a dead driver came the sound of a radio, which was unharmed in the explosion. An ad was playing, and the pitchman's agreeable voice declared that insurance protects everyone, no matter what.
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“Explosion” Themes
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Terrorism and the Civilian Cost of War
Vivimarie VanderPoorten's “Explosion” depicts the 1996 Central Bank bombing by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant group that sought to establish an independent Tamil state in northeast Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan Civil War. While the LTTE fought to end discrimination against, and gain civil rights for, the Tamil minority in Sinhalese-dominant Sri Lanka, both they and the Sri Lankan government became notorious for their violent tactics. The LTTE often utilized suicide bombers, as was the case in the Central Bank attack. “Explosion” illustrates how such political violence impacts civilian life, zooming in on some of the ordinary people whose lives the bombing ended or irrevocably changed. Through its disturbing imagery, it suggests that even urgent political ends don’t justify terroristic means; such violence always comes at a massive human cost.
The poem highlights the impact of the Central Bank bombing rather than the issues that drove it, suggesting that the bombers' cause could not justify the human toll of the attack. "Lives ended" and "Eyes were blinded," the speaker recounts, referring to the 91 people who died and the more than 100 who lost their sight in the bombing. Almost all the victims were civilians, many of whom worked near the bank and were just going about their normal “workday” when the bomb detonated. “Even the cawing of crows” was drowned by the blast; everything in the bomb’s radius felt its “Prism of fire and fury.” Even nature suffered in this human, political attack. The poem’s imagery is deliberately shocking: ordinary people are “crushed / Under brick and glass,” while others have their hands sliced off “like cucumbers,” and still others are left “h[olding] their eyeballs in their palms.” Such graphic, disturbing details cast the terroristic violence as deeply cruel.
Indeed, the poem focuses on the ordinary people whose lives the bombing stole or derailed, implying that war's true cost is paid not by powerful leaders but by civilians caught in its crossfire. The speaker points out that many of the victims were innocent citizens going about their daily lives. These include “Retired wage earners” visiting the bank to “Collect[]” their retirement “funds,” a “nearby vegetable seller[],” and “Women in sari” (a common garment in southern Asia). The victims weren’t killed because they specifically were responsible for Tamil oppression; they were merely the cost of sending a message to the Sri Lankan government.
The speaker even says that the “blood spattered” on “the streets” served to “eras[e] memory.” Partly, this means that precious memories died with the victims. Partly, it might suggest that terrorist violence distracts from or obscures the root causes of social problems. It's a powerful shock that disrupts political narratives and alters historical "memory."
Broadly, the poem illustrates the inherent brutality of terrorism, even as a response to state oppression. It doesn’t criticize the Sri Lankan Tamils' broader fight for freedom, or directly analyze the Sri Lankan Civil War, but it does implicitly condemn tactics such as those used by the LTTE. Its grisly images suggest that loss of civilian life is never an acceptable cost of war.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-24
- Lines 25-33
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The Fragility of Life
Though Vivimarie VanderPoorten's “Explosion” documents a specific, deadly attack, it also comments on the fragility of life in general. After describing a scene of carnage, it ends, chillingly, with the image of a "pleasant" radio voice advertising the "protect[ions]" of "insurance." In reality, the poem implies, such protection is an illusion. The world is violent, the human body is vulnerable, and death can come bursting in at any time, even on an average street on an average day. Nor can any sum of money (as from an insurance policy) restore or compensate for lost human life.
The poem shows how suddenly and inexplicably “lives ended” on an otherwise normal day—and thus how fragile life is in general. The victims of the 1996 Central Bank bombing were people of all kinds. "Retired wage earners," vendors, and other ordinary citizens were killed or maimed. These random civilian deaths are a disturbing reminder that death comes for everyone, often without warning.
Indeed, the poem zeroes in on the idea that the future is never guaranteed, no matter how one might prepare for it. The final stanza depicts a “dead driver” in a “damaged car,” whose “radio” is playing an “insurance” commercial. The spokesman's “pleasant voice” claims that, “big or small, insurance / protects them all”—a claim that rings hollow in light of the horrible bombing. This startling contrast illustrates how nothing—not “insurance,” luck, gods, or anything else people place their faith in—can fully "protect" us from the reality of being mortal. While insurance may help someone who survives an accident, it can’t do anything for the “driver” who died. Humans often harbor illusions of safety that push thoughts of death far from mind, but in truth, death is always nearby.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 25-33
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Explosion”
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Lines 1-5
On the day ...
... Time staggered"Explosion" begins with an allusion to the 1996 Central Bank bombing in Colombo, Sri Lanka:
On the day the truckload
Of explosives
Drove into the Central bank,This attack was carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). It occurred during the 26-year-long Sri Lankan Civil War, during which the Sinhalese-run Sri Lankan government fought the LTTE, a militant group hoping to create a separate state for the country's Tamil population. While the LTTE was responding to decades of persecution from the Sri Lankan government, both sides were guilty of committing egregious war crimes and human rights violations over the course of this conflict. Massive civilian casualties resulted from the violence. This poem centers the experience of some of those civilians during the most lethal suicide bombing of the war.
According to the speaker, when the truck full of explosives crashed through the main gate of the Central Bank, "For a long second / Time staggered." The phrase "long second" suggests that time seemed to slow down as people realized what was happening. The personification of "Time" as a "stagger[ing]" figure makes it seem as if even time itself were in shock. Such violence, the poem implies, rips apart the fabric of ordinary life.
"Explosion" is a 33-line free verse poem arranged into three irregular stanzas. Its lack of meter and rhyme scheme contributes to its no-frills directness. Lines are generally on the shorter side, and heavy enjambment throughout the poem lends speed and urgency to the speaker's observations of unimaginable violence. The jagged, erratically broken lines also make the language itself seem affected by the explosion—as if it's splintered in pieces or "stagger[ing]" down the page.
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Lines 6-11
All sounds of ...
... fire and fury -
Lines 12-17
Lives ended ...
... brick and glass -
Lines 18-24
The nearby vegetable ...
... erasing memory. -
Lines 25-28
Out of the ...
... radio blared, unscathed -
Lines 29-33
on a commercial ...
... protects them all.
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“Explosion” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration adds emphasis and force to the poem's description of a bomb blast.
First, in lines 3-7, a long trickle of quiet /s/ alliteration pulls the reader in, focusing attention on the setting and capturing the way time seemed to slow down in the instant before the explosion:
Drove into the Central bank,
For a long second
Time staggered
All sounds of a workday morning
In the cityNext, the throaty /c/ alliteration in line 8 seems to mimic the sound it describes: the repetitious "cawing of the crows" before the blast drowns out all other noise. In line 11, powerful, fricative /f/ alliteration ("fire and fury") evokes the force of the bomb as it destroys everything in its path.
More /c/ alliteration in lines 15-16 ("Collecting" and "crushed") highlights the disturbing image of people "crushed" under broken walls. Likewise, /s/ alliteration in lines 22-23 ("spattered / the streets") draws attention to the image of carnage in the wake of the bomb.
Lines 25-28 contain persistent /d/ alliteration ("damaged car dead / driver") and /d/ consonance ("window," "damaged car dead," "radio"). These hard sounds feel appropriate to the harshness of the image: a destroyed car whose civilian driver has died in the bombing.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 3: “Central”
- Line 4: “second”
- Line 5: “staggered”
- Line 6: “sounds”
- Line 7: “city”
- Line 8: “cawing,” “crows”
- Line 11: “fire,” “fury”
- Line 15: “Collecting”
- Line 16: “crushed”
- Line 22: “spattered”
- Line 23: “streets”
- Line 26: “damaged,” “dead”
- Line 27: “driver”
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Simile
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Enjambment
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Irony
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"Explosion" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Central bank
- Staggered
- Prism
- Provident funds
- Sari
- Unscathed
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(Location in poem: Line 3: “Drove into the Central bank”)
This refers specifically to the Colombo headquarters of Sri Lanka's foremost banking institution, which the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attacked in a 1996 suicide bombing.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Explosion”
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Form
"Explosion" contains 33 lines of free verse, arranged into three stanzas of various lengths. The first stanza describes the bombing itself, the second stanza describes the bomb's impact on ordinary people nearby, and the third stanza zeroes in on the "radio" of a person who died in the explosion.
The poem's lines are generally on the shorter side, though their length ranges from one to eight syllables. (The shortest line, fittingly, is the monosyllabic word "Boom.") Strong enjambment makes these lines feel jagged or splintered, evoking the sudden wreckage and carnage of the explosion.
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Meter
The poem is written in free verse, so it doesn't follow a set meter. The freedom of the verse contributes to the conversational, matter-of-fact sound of the language. The violent and disturbing images sound all the more powerful because they are stated with such simplicity.
The musicality of meter might have made the poem sound less gritty and more stylized—more conventionally "poetic." By cutting to the point with direct, stripped-down language and ordinary speech rhythms, the poet lets the grisly images speak for themselves.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Explosion" doesn't follow a rhyme scheme. Like meter, rhyme schemes became less common in English poetry after the beginning of the 20th century, as modernist writers sought to break from the conventions of previous centuries. Since this poem was written in 2007, it's no surprise that the poet eschews these tools.
The lack of a rhyme scheme, like the lack of meter, also results in a less musical poem. Since the poem describes horrific violence, it would be jarring or deeply ironic if its language were pleasant to read aloud. Instead, the plain, undecorated lines help foreground the ordinary lives that were destroyed in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
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“Explosion” Speaker
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The poem's speaker might be someone who bore witness to the Central Bank bombing, or they might be someone who is later reconstructing what happened based on eyewitness accounts and news stories. In any case, the speaker isn't the focal point of the poem; they don't refer to themselves at all, and the reader doesn't learn anything about them. Instead, the speaker is merely a conduit allowing the reader to experience the horrors of the bombing.
There are a couple of subtle opinion claims here, such as the claim that the moment of the explosion felt "long" (line 4) and the description of the ad spokesman's voice as "pleasant" (line 30). For the most part, however, the speaker's matter-of-fact voice and almost omniscient gaze present the scene as neutrally as possible, leaving the reader to interpret the significance of the description.
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“Explosion” Setting
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The poem describes the 1996 Central Bank bombing by the Liberation Tigers (a militant organization) during the Sri Lankan Civil War. The poem places the reader directly at the site of this event: it's titled "Explosion," and the first few lines describe "the truckload / Of explosives" that "Drove into the Central bank."
The speaker describes how the explosion swallows up all other sounds in the city, as well as its terrible consequences: civilians "crushed / Under brick and glass" or badly injured. Images of "blood" and carnage portray the horror and human cost of the suicide bombing.
The speaker also describes a wrecked car inside of which a dead person no longer hears the drone of an "insurance [commercial]." The juxtaposition between the person killed in the explosion and the "unscathed" radio, with its cheerful voice selling "insurance," highlights how death can come rushing in at any time, no matter how "protect[ed]" someone might feel.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Explosion”
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Literary Context
"Explosion" was published in Vivimarie VanderPoorten's first collection of poetry, Nothing Prepares You, in 2007. The poem alludes to the 1996 Central Bank bombing by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. VanderPoorten would write more extensively about the impact of the Sri Lankan Civil War in her second collection, Stitch Your Eyelids Shut, in 2010.
VanderPoorten has said that she writes from "a sense of justice." Her mixed Sinhalese and Belgian heritage have helped inform her work, offering her a complex vantage point from which to write. Her poetic influences include prominent feminist writers Kamala Das, Jeanette Winterson, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, and Khaled Hosseini, and gender issues are a frequent theme in her poetry.
More broadly, her work falls under the umbrella of postcolonial poetry—poetry that is written by non-Europeans living in the wake of Western colonialism, and that deals directly or indirectly with the consequences of colonialism on native peoples. "Explosion" is a perfect example, as it relates the terrible violence that resulted from the Sri Lankan Civil War, the causes of which have been mostly attributed to British colonialism.
Historical Context
The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009) was a long and bloody conflict between the country's mostly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and mostly Hindu Tamil minority. Despite ethnic and religious differences, however, Sinhalese and Tamil peoples lived peaceably together in Sri Lanka up until British colonial rule, which began in 1815 and ended in 1948.
When the British first colonized Sri Lanka (historically called Ceylon), there were a relatively small number of Tamil citizens who had, centuries earlier, migrated to the island from India. The British, however, quickly imported somewhere around a million Indian Tamils to run cash crop plantations in the northern part of the country. They gave Tamils preferential treatment, creating rifts between these newcomers and the native Sinhalese majority. When Ceylon won its independence in 1948, the Sinhalese majority began discriminating against these Indian Tamils, passing laws that made it impossible for Tamil speakers to hold office or citizenship.
Decades of escalating tension and anti-Tamil pogroms resulted in the formation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant organization that fought to create a separate Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka where Tamils would be free from the persecution of the Sinhalese-run Sri Lankan government. The LTTE declared the "First Eelam War" in 1983. What followed was a series of violent conflicts in which both the insurgents and the Sri Lankan government committed heinous war crimes. The Tigers were notorious for using suicide bombers and enlisting child soldiers. The Sri Lankan government likewise targeted Tamil youth. Whole villages were destroyed, and both sides committed numerous human rights violations.
The poem refers specifically to a suicide bombing by the Liberation Tigers, who attacked the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, on January 31, 1996. The driver drove a truck containing 440 pounds of explosives into the bank's main gate. The blast killed over 90 people and injured 1,400 others, blinding at least a hundred people.
The 26-year conflict ended in 2009, after claiming more than 100,000 lives, including thousands of civilians.
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More “Explosion” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Out Loud — Vivimarie VanderPoorten reads "Explosion" aloud.
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In Conversation with Vivimarie VanderPoorten — An interview with the poet following the release of her prize-winning collection, Nothing Prepares You.
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The Central Bank Bombing — A 1996 Washington Post article about the incident described in "Explosion."
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An Overview of the Sri Lankan Civil War — Read about the long and bloody conflict that forms the background for this poem.
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Poetic Economies: A Book Review — Read a review of Vivimarie VanderPoorten's 1996 collection, Nothing Prepares You, in which "Explosion" was published.
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