Cold Knap Lake :: English Literature

Cold Knap LakeThis poem is about an disaster 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 anesthetic beauty spot. A littlegirl is dr admited in the lake, or so it seems, tho the poets mothergives her the kiss of life, and her (the poets) father takes thechild home. The girls parents are ugly 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 disaster as one of umpteen things thatare lost under closing weewee.What begins as a reflection on a vivid memory ends by recognizing thelimits and vagueness of the musical mode we recall the past. In the openinglines, the poet seizes the readers attention with the seemingseriousness of death. This makes the mothers natural action seem yet moremiraculous. If we assume that the wartime frock is being listless during(not after) the Second World War, then the poet (born in 1937) wouldhave been at close to eight years old. The mother is a heroine but heraction has nobody to do with the war. The rest of the crowd either donot fill out about artificial respiration, or fear to take the initiative.And they are reserved 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 origin asrelated in Genesis (the first book of the Bible), where graven image gives Adamlife, 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 mind this was the right way to teach their daughter to bemore careful. (The incident may als o explain the poets reluctance,years later, as she writes in Catrin, to let her own daughter skate inthe dark.)In the penultimate stanza, the lake of the call supplies an apt imageof memory. Under the shadow of willow trees, cloudy with bright mud,stirred as the swans fly from the lake - the troubled surface hides whatever exact information. What really happened lies with many other lostthings under the water that closes over them - in the lake, where