Poem of the month

chosen by David Underdown

Electricity

by Lavinia Greenlaw

The night you called to tell me
that the unevenness between the days
is as simple as meeting or not meeting,
I was thinking about electricity –
how at no point on a circuit
can power diminish or accumulate,
how you also need a lack of balance
for energy to be released. Trust it.
Once, being held like that,
no edge, no end and no beginning,
I could not tell our actions apart:
if it was you who lifted my head to the light,
if it was I who said how much I wanted
to look at your face. Your beautiful face.

This poem is taken from Lavinia Greenlaw’s 1993 collection ‘Night Photograph’ published by Faber and Faber. Greenlaw’s work often has an elusive quality that accumulates with re-reading. A Londoner born into a family of doctors and scientists, many of her poems, like this one, are informed by her interest in science and themes of displacement, loss and belonging.