"The face I had before I was born... " — was
That I, you, all of us, only experience life and death as temporary guises in a much longer and more subtle journey. We are given the form of an infant,and then the form of an elder, it is true; but then we are again given the form of a new infant all over again, and ad infinitum.
Here, I hope, the reader is led to a deeper meaning of his future and his life —that he is far older than his present bodily manifestation, that he is far greater than even a mere chain of such manifestation; that he is, if he makes the effort to see reality more clearly, as great as the galaxy itself; and as great as the sum of all the galaxies together, i.e., the universe itself.
Thus, the poem is different each time it reaches out and touches its reader. all sustaining the same message of hope and personal infinity; but carefully leading the reader through one stage of understanding of the gargantuan realities within himself, after another.