What begins as a reflection on a vivid memory ends by recognizing the limits and vagueness of the way we recall the past. In the opening lines, the poet seizes the reader's attention with the seeming seriousness of death. This makes the mother's action seem yet more miraculous. If we assume that the “wartime frock” is being worn during (not after) the Second World War, then the poet (born in 1937) would have been at most eight years old. The mother is a “heroine” but her action has nothing to do with the war. The rest of the crowd either do not know about artificial respiration, or fear to take the initiative. And they are “silent” perhaps because they do not expect the child to recover. The poet notes how her mother's concern is selfless - she gives “her breath” to “a stranger's child”. (We can contrast this with the poet's admission of her own coldness to someone else's child in .) The image also suggests the miracle of creation as related in Genesis (the first book of the Bible), where God gives Adam life, by breathing into his nostrils.
The poet does not condemn, but seems shocked by, the child's being “thrashed for almost drowning”. But for all we know, the parents who beat her thought this was the right way to teach their daughter to be more careful. (The incident may also explain the poet's reluctance, years later, as she writes in , to let her own daughter skate in the dark.)
In the penultimate stanza, the lake of the title supplies an apt image of memory. Under the shadow of willow trees, cloudy with “satiny mud”, stirred as the swans fly from the lake - the “troubled surface” hides any exact information. What really happened lies with many other “lost things” under the water that closes over them - in the lake, where “the poor man's daughter” lay drowning.
The poem has a very clear structure - stanzas of four and six lines, a pattern that repeats itself, then a closing rhymed couplet (almost in the manner of a Shakespearean sonnet). Cold Knap Lake is where these things really happened, but its association with lost history and things being buried and rediscovered later may echo the ideas in the poem. Apart from the extended analogy of the “troubled surface” (which was literally present but also works metaphorically) there are very few metaphors in the poem (“long green silk” and “closing water” - can you find any others?).
- How does Gillian Clarke present memory in this poem?
- What do you think of the motif (thematic image) of water in Cold Knap Lake?
- How does the poet use images of things that were literally present and metaphors (there are very few) in this poem?
- In your own words, explain what you think the poet is saying in the last six-line stanza and the rhyming couplet that follows it.
