Cold Knap Lake :: English Literature

Cold Knap LakeThis poem is about an misfortune 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 drowned in the lake, or so it seems, but the poets mothergives her the touch of life, and her (the poets) father takes thechild home. The girls parents 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 isinconclusive - the writer sees the incident as one of many things thatare lost under closing water.What begins as a reflection on a vivid retrospection ends by recognizing thelimits and vagueness of the way 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 assume that the wartime frock is world worn during(not after) the Second World War, then the poet (born in 1937) wouldhave been at most eight years old. The mother is a heroine but heraction has postal code 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 possibly 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 psyche elses child inBaby-sitting.) The image also suggests the miracle of creation asrelated in Genesis (the first book of the Bible), where God gives Adamlife, by alert 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 fille to bemore careful. (The incident may also explain the poets reluctance,years later, as she wri tes in Catrin, to let her own daughter skate 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 fly from the lake - the troubled near hidesany exact information. What really happened lies with many other lostthings under the water that closes over them - in the lake, where