(For Colm at three years old)

You broke an Easter egg
I had kept since a child
as you danced round the fire bare-footed.

I thought how the Chinese
would mark out in gold
the crack in a broken vessel,
taking a delight in its fragility,
in its state between existing and not...
but this egg was in a thousand pieces.

And though there was nothing fragile
about your roaring
that drowned the music
you'd been dancing to,
nor in the hot tears
teeming down your cheeks,
I would mark out with gold
your sudden pain
as you understood that beauty does not last.