The American Style

Jesse Breite

When color comes through
the windows—red, green, blue,
the picture pieced together
is always a shattered scene.

Even revived, cathedral glass
is never quite healed by the light.
But this—no brittle crazy glass,
this—the brushless milky opalescent

plating of Louis C. Tiffany
who knew, unlike his father,
that the only jewel was
light breaking through light,

that glass could be the paint,
that it could feather, ripple,
flash with every dimension
of distance: Louis Comfort

who knew the Hudson River,
heeded Ruskin’s call to return,
brought back the Golden Age
with pursed lips on colorless faces,

made his name a brand—his brand
a promise that we would never
be alone in steepled buildings
of cherrywood and Gothic stone.