The Ingredient

I read a great poem just before bed last night: The Ingredient by Martin Stannard. I found it here and it’s one of what Anthony Wilson calls Lifesaving Poems – essential poems for hard times.

I love the whimsical and ironic tone, playful ambiguity, and the idiosyncratic significance of the ordinary

“Teacups have it.
I don’t know why teacups have it,
but teacups do.”

Why tea cups and not mugs?

I hope you’ll read it, and find it enjoyable and intriguing.

Anyway – waking up this morning, I found my mind filled with my things that had it and things that don’t have it.  So I had to write them down. This doesn’t have Stannard’s wit, brevity, and sense of mystery but it was a lot of fun to write:

The Ingredient

Rock buns, egg cups, and Eli’s health bread – toasted – have it.
Home-made marmalade on Letheringsett wholemeal bread had it,
and The Owl Tea Rooms in Holt used to sell it.
Scarlet runners, and fresh dug potatoes with butter and mint have it.
Stilton usually has it. Cheddar often does not.
Cheese wrapped in slices never has it.
Curry leaves, masala dosa, and rhubarb have it.
Barley sugar, liquorice, and treacle tart have it.
Salt and vinegar crisps have it.
Fizzy drinks don’t.
Chilblains, cold tea, and bad dreams don’t

Sandwiches eaten outside in winter,
and fat raindrops on a hot August pavement definitely have it.
The smell of bacon on a campsite, wild garlic,
and dried orange peel burning –  has it.

Fray Bentos tins, Cherry Blossom polish, and Colman’s mustard have it.
Spam does not.
Tartan thermos flasks and Primus stoves have it.
Pencil boxes have it.
Paintboxes have it.
Milky glass marbles and ball bearings – have it.
Buckets and spades have it.
Folding clasp knives –  suitable for spreading jam and sharpening pencils – have it.
Wooden boxes, cotton reels, lead nails,
black glass buttons, and pillar boxes topped with knitted hats – they have it.

Airmail letters, triangular stamps,
Morris Minor Travellers and Jaguars had it.
Dinky toys, milk bottles on the doorstep,
and churns on the platform – all had it.
Porters with whistles, and carriage doors with leather straps.
Deck chairs, shelters on the seafront,
sea views, yellow gorse, and bladderwrack – have it.
A thunderclap in a snowstorm, a path through a wheat-field – has it.
Afternoon naps have it.

Sheep on unfenced fells have it.
Dry stone walls, and one-inch Ordnance Survey maps.
Pine cones, horse chestnut trees,
hedges with blackberries, and garden sheds have it.
Snowdrops, cowslips, foxgloves,
and gardens with wallflowers –  have it.

Wellington boots can have it –
but only if black, not green, and never shiny.
Gloves have it if they’re hand-knitted or black leather.
Sou’westers have it when they’re yellow.
Baseball caps do not –  however old or beloved.
Doilies do not.
Antimacassars do not.
Thistles, nettles, and lacy handkerchiefs do not.

Old Penguin covers have it. Mostly. It all depends.
Some crime stories have it.
Emil and the Detectives and The Thirty-Nine Steps both have it.
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop.
Essays by George Orwell.
Novels by Jane Austen.
Artwork by Eric Ravilious and Richard Diebenkorn –  have it.
Cézanne and Van Gogh had it.
Antoine Doinel and The 400 Blows had it, sans doute.
Emily Dickinson – certainly.
Some bookshops have it. It depends.

Bizet’s Pearl Fishers’ Duet – played by a brass band with euphonium tenors – has it.
We’ll Gather Lilacs in the Spring Again on the wireless – has it.
The song of a lark, the call of the curlew, the cry of the loon –
but not seagulls stealing your chips.

Greenwich Village lost it.
Thatched roofs and clotted cream have versions of it.
Greek islands definitely used to have it –
maybe they still do.

Spit and cough caffs can have it.
Central heating and two-car garages can’t.
Airport lounges never have it.

The Guardian had it, but sold it.
The BBC had it, but trashed it.
NPR may have had it – but it doesn’t now.
The New Statesman regained it.
The Spectator earned it.
The New York Times ran away from it.
Stonewall and Amnesty had it once, but no longer.
The ACLU turned its back.
Planned Parenthood threw it away.

Some things lose it trying too hard.
Some, carelessly.
Some things keep it without knowing –
hidden in drawers, under peeling paint.

You find it again, round the next corner,
between the pages of an old book,
written down in a diary
or a letter you didn’t throw away.

Sometimes it takes you unawares –
in the middle of frying an egg
or peeling an onion.
It surprises you on the bus,
or on waking, as the light filters through the blind.

It has it, or it does not.
It comforts, disappoints, disturbs.
But it always is. Or it is not.
However long you lock it away,
however much you wish it gone –
it waits in silence,
not needing to be found.

It is what we notice. Or forget.
And sometimes,
it is simply there.