Unknown faces in the street <br />And winter coming on. I <br />Stand in the last moments of <br />The city, no more a child, <br />Only a man, -- one who has <br />Looked upon his own nakedness <br />Without shame, and in defeat <br />Has seen nothing to bless. <br />Touched once, like a plum, I turned <br />Rotten in the meat, or like <br />The plum blossom I never <br />Saw, hard at the edges, burned <br />At the first entrance of life, <br />And so endured, unreckoned, <br />Untaken, with nothing to give. <br />The first Jew was God; the second <br />Denied him; I am alive.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-turning/
