The O-Filler

I was sure I had already posted this poem, but it seems not, so here it is. I was a bit suspicious of the text I found online -- rightly so, as it turned out -- so I went downstairs on Friday into the paper periodicals crypt, and found the original issue of The Atlantic Monthly (needless to say, it's a great privilege and very convenient for a curious mind, to work in a university library). I love looking at old periodicals: the adverts, typography and layouts in the pre-digital age can be truly appalling. Standards and expectations have risen, not fallen, in the last 50 years. Though this poem is an exception. It has been set in a box on a whole page within a border of text with filled-in Os. Nice.

The O-Filler, by Alastair Reid

One noon in the library, I watched a man --
imagine! -- filling in O's, a little, rumpled
nobody of a man, who licked his stub of pencil
and leaned over every O with a loving care,
shading it neatly, exactly to its edges,
until the open pages
were pocked and dotted with solid O's, like villages
and capitals on a map. And yet, so peppered,
somehow the book looked lived in and complete.

That whole afternoon, as the light outside softened,
and the library groaned woodenly,
he worked and worked, his O-so-patient shading
descending like an eyelid over each open O
for page after page. Not once did he miss one,
or hover even a moment over an a,
or an e or a p or a g. Only the O's --
oodles of O's, O's multitudinous, O's manifold,
O's italic and roman.
And what light on his crumpled face when he discovered --
as I supposed -- odd words like zoo and ooze,
or -- joy! -- oolong and odontology!

Think now. In that limitless library,
all round the steep-shelved walls, bulging in their bindings,
books stood, waiting. Heaven knows how many
he had so far filled, but no matter, there still were
uncountable volumes of O-laden prose, and odes
with inflated capital O's (in the manner of Shelley),
O-bearing Bibles and biographies,
even whole sections devoted to O alone,
all his for the filling. Glory, glory, glory!
How lovely and open and endless the world must have seemed to him,
how utterly clear-cut! Think of it. A pencil
was all he needed. Life was one wide O.

Anyway, why in the end should O's not be closed
as eyes are? I envied him. After all,
sitting across from him, had I accomplished
anything as firm as he had, or as fruitful?
What could I show? a handful of scrawled lines,
an afternoon yawned and wondered away,
and a growing realization that in time
even my scribbled words would come
under his grubby thumb, and the blinds be drawn
on all my O's. And only this thought for comfort --
that when he comes to this poem, a proper joy
may amaze his wizened face, and, O, a pure pleasure
make that meticulous pencil quiver.

(Atlanric Monthly, February 1960)

Of course, we have a special re-education cellar for anyone caught O-filling our stock, or worse. I was down in The Crypt a while ago looking for something in the Strand Magazine and discovered that someone had been busy, razoring out the Sherlock Holmes stories. I know! Flaying alive is too lenient. You may be interested to know that the worst razorers of academic journal articles are Law students. Figures...