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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
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Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

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CLIONA O'CONNELL

Cliona O’Connell grew up in Co Wicklow and currently lives in Dublin. She has previously had work published in the Sunday Tribune and the Fish Anthology.

Fear of the Spread-sheet

“You don't hear of accountants who can’t open a spread-sheet, or farmers who take against fields."  

— “Author, Author: Persons from Porlock”, The Guardian (7 March 2009).

All my life I have stared

at these numbers, afraid.

They are sacred vessels,

tabernacles. The zero,

its seeming innocence,

with its open mouth,

the very spit and image

of nothingness; the one,

that would divide me

while keeping me whole.

I sometimes imagine a number

and lately I have come

to prod with a stick at the cell

where its formula is hiding,

its roots rustling

their tangled spy routes,

from profit and loss

to balance sheet

and what I fear most

in this desperate mess

is this awful devotion,

this commitment.

©2009 Cliona O'Connell

Author Links

'Migrations', an O'Connell poem in the Tribune

'Dinner with Old Friends on the Summer Solstice' at Big Smoke Writing Factory

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