At the Study Day on Diversity

we’ve done the beanbag stuff.

I should embrace the person next to me -

simple tolerance just isn’t enough.

 

We’ll talk in confidence and show respect,

let one another speak

without butting in – then I interject

to ask what time we’re breaking off to eat

 

from the salad bowl and the stewing pot -

different, yet the same.

Let my beer be cold and my curry hot;

I’ll have samosas while the steel bands play.

 

We compose a list of those around us  

and label them oppressed:

veggies, smokers and benefit scroungers -

the plaster cast leave bullet holes undressed.

 

I think of Jews in Hitler’s Germany;

the martyr on the cross.

All-inclusive oppression disturbs me;

I say our sense of perspective is lost

 

and ask whether choice and diversity  

might ever be thought bad?

When her face betrays her uncertainty

I know better why they wear a hijab.