Whistler’s Father

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Once slicing through the Russian snow at night
Flying on electric wires from Moscow to St Petersburg
At a constant speed along two polished tracks, mirroring the moon  
We cut through the pine trees standing upright like shocked onlookers
The whole experience was a symphony in blue
And I thought of Whistler’s father, the engineer

 

At the end of his life John Lavery of Belfast wrote a memoir
In it he says Whistler the younger was not as great an influence
As Joseph Crawhall the watercolourist
But then, he might not have painted Eileen’s First Communion
Mary Auras in Spring
Nor any of Hazel’s harmonies
If Whilstler’s father had not gone to Russia to build a railway