The speaker opens with a simple declaration of faith: "I believe in the face." What they believe in isn't a god or an idea but something we all carry around and rarely think about. The face is called "a miracle of change," which suggests how much expression can shift in a moment, and "inner child" hints that something young and unguarded still lives behind the grown-up surface.
The second stanza is stranger. A face is compared to "a grave that's able to sing," an image that joins death and music. Judging by the imagery, the face can seem still or closed, even buried, yet it is capable of sudden song. The final line, "under a hat and eyebrows," pictures that face half-hidden by ordinary things.
The title, "Alterity," means otherness, so the poem may be about how another person's face is both a mystery and a living presence. The mood is quiet, wondering, and a little eerie, a mix of reverence and surprise.