Stained glass, high in the clerestory at York,
or all our wedded lives framed in this sunless
stairwell, a wine merchant from the Rose
at Chartres still rolling brightly off to work.
The grozing. The oxides. Such pains they took.
Handblown and drawn. Fired. A hundred blazing
reds burn through the days since John was king. You raise
binoculars to a Jesse tree and talk
to me of medieval things. That passion
fades now, though you might glance up at the windows
in our daughter’s college. I can see lead
“cames” waiting, numbered pieces, each positioned
for the kiln’s revelation. When they fuse,
how will our glazed lives glow out from the dead?