Is it my face I sometimes glimpse in the street?
There vice and ugliness sit like a troll.
An abomination from which I only retreat,
forgetting the leper whom Jesus made whole.
Is it my face I sometimes glimpse in the street?
Crime smears our features with a satirist's brush
and roiling crowds reek of commonness.
God save me from both the pride and anguish
that turns me away from the worst of us.
Is it my face I sometimes glimpse in the street?