No one asks the stained glass what it thinks
Of being stained, of being pieces assembled
By another species, but the panes of stained
Glass windows in those older cathedrals
Are mostly the monastic class of fairies,
And their work, their prayer, their meditation
Is to one day become clear. That is, they are
Themselves the color that inheres, their lives
Measured by the fading changes humans
Tend to name time. Fading is their discipline
Made of time, and the fairy monks and nuns
Practice freeing themselves more swiftly
And surely from the illusory patterns thrown
By the polychrome shadows stretched long
Across stone floors. To be perfectly clear
Means to absent the glass altogether, to be
As the glass, as purely translucent, full
Spectrum blankness, empty and open
To the light. For the stains, to be clear is
To be gone or to be as gone, to be nothing,
A fairy soul non-self of no color, no shadow,
No obstacle. To the human awarenesses
Below, myopic, bathing our sight in the soft,
Polytropic fictions glinting in their panes,
It would seem a loss to lose the modulating
Colors, the stories they preserve, our dream
Of holy timelessness, but, fortunately,
Perhaps, few humans last as long as the hue
Of any cloistered fairy, anchorite of the light.
Still, the brothers and sisters, no matter
How deep-dyed, are disciplined and will
Eventually wing away again as invisible flight.
For now, every single stained pane is a tiny
Passion of its own, surrendered, body bright,
And every ascension, rose, and crucifixion
Is a marriage of stained souls, rich or faint,
To the clear, hard, brittle-blown transparent
Facts also shifting slowly, reluctant to let go,
That admit the ever-moving outer light.
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