Gillian Allnutt is a British poet from the Northeast of the country and the recipient of the Queen's Prize for poetry. This poem is from her Bloodaxe selected poems.
This is clearly a poet sure of her style, later in her life. The loosely rhymed couplets and the big theme. But how briskly she deals with the whole "cul de sac" (notice not hyphenated, leaning us towards the multiples meanings of cul in French) of family history. And also how blithely she sweeps away the "festival/ of literature" that people aspire towards. (Again a masterful use of the broken line: festival (a rave? a party? no...) of literature.) A bathos that seems to mock her stock in trade.
But then that last, breathless line, dragging itself through the clay-like heaviness of all those Ws.( "word...wade..wood...weald..weather") until releasing itself into that last astral space.
It is the road to God
that matters now, the ragged road, the wood.
And if you will, drop pebbles here and there
like Hansel, Gretel, right where
they'll shine
in the wilful light of the moon.
You won't be going back to the hut
where father, mother plot
the cul de sac of the world
in a field
that's permanently full
of people
looking for a festival
of literature, a fairytale,
a feathered
nest of brothers, sisters. Would
that first world, bared now to the word
God, wade
with you, through wood, into the weald and weather
of the stars?