Cold Knap Lake :: English Literature

Cold Knap LakeThis poem is about an incident from the poets childhood. Cold KnapLake is a real place near Barry in Glamorgan, South Wales. It is aBronze Age burial site, and something of a local beauty spot. A littlegirl is dr take ined in the lake, or so it seems, hardly the poets mothergives her the kiss of life, and her (the poets) father takes thechild home. The girls pargonnts are poor and beat her as a punishment.At this point, the poet wonders whether she, too, was...there andsaw this (the beating, rather than the rescue) or not. The poem is foolish - the writer sees the incident as one of many things thatare lost under closing water.What begins as a reflection on a vivid memory ends by recognizing thelimits and vagueness of the appearance we recall the past. In the openinglines, the poet seizes the readers attention with the seemingseriousness of death. This makes the mothers action seem yet moremiraculous. If we capture that the wartime frock is being worn during(not afte r) the Second World War, then the poet (born in 1937) wouldhave been at most eight years old. The mother is a heroine scarce heraction has nothing to do with the war. The rest of the crowd either donot know about artificial respiration, or fear to take the initiative.And they are silent perhaps because they do not expect the child torecover. The poet notes how her mothers concern is selfless - shegives her breath to a strangers child. (We can contrast this withthe poets admission of her own coldness to someone elses child inBaby-sitting.) The image also suggests the miracle of creation asrelated in Genesis (the first book of the Bible), where God gives tourlife, by breathing into his nostrils.Back to topThe poet does not condemn, but seems shocked by, the childs beingthrashed for almost drowning. But for all we know, the parents whobeat her thought this was the right way to teach their daughter to bemore careful. (The incident may also explain the poets reluctance,years later, as she writes in Catrin, to let her own daughter glide inthe dark.)In the penultimate stanza, the lake of the title supplies an apt imageof memory. Under the shadow of willow trees, cloudy with satiny mud,stirred as the swans rainfly from the lake - the troubled surface hidesany exact information. What really happened lies with many other lostthings under the water that closes over them - in the lake, where