My Virtual Reading Room

I thought this would be appropriate to the occasion.

"Rejoice that under cloud and star

The planet’s more than Maine or Texas.

Bless the delightful fact there are

Twelve months, nine muses, and two sexes;

And infinite in earth’s dominions

Arts, climates, wonders, and opinions."

Full poem is below. Hope you enjoy!
Cat
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In Praise of Diversity

Since this ingenious earth began

To shape itself from fire and rubble;

Since God invented man, and man

At once fell to, inventing trouble,

One virtue, one subversive grace

Has chiefly vexed the human race.

 

One whimsical beatitude,

Concocted for his gain and glory,

Has man most stoutly misconstrued

Of all the primal category—

Counting no blessing, but a flaw,

That Difference is the mortal law.

 

 

Adam, perhaps, while toiling late,

With life a book still strange to read in,

Saw his new world, how variegate,

And mourned, “It was not so in Eden,”

Confusing thus from the beginning

Unlikeness with original sinning.

 

And still some sons of Adam’s clay

Labor in person or by proxy

At altering to a common way

The planet’s holy heterodoxy.

Till now, so dogged is the breed,

Almost it seems that they succeed.

One shrill, monotonous, level note

The human orchestra’s reduced to.

Man casts his ballot, turns his coat,

Gets born, gets buried as he used to,

Makes war, makes love—but with a kind

Of masked and universal mind.

 

His good has no nuances. He

Doubts or believes with total passion.

Heretics choose for heresy

Whatever’s the prevailing fashion.

Those wearing Tolerance for a label

Call other views intolerable.

 

“For or Against”’s the only rule.

Damned are the unconvinced, the floaters.

Now all must go to public school,

March with the League of Women Voters,

Or else for safety get allied

With a unanimous Other Side.

 

There’s white, there’s black; no tint between.

Truth is a plane that was a prism.

All’s Blanchard that’s not Bishop Sheen.

All’s treason that’s not patriotism.

Faith, charity, hope—now all must fit

One pattern or its opposite.

 

Or so it seems. Yet who would dare

Deny that nature planned it other,

When every freckled thrush can wear

A dapple various from his brother,

When each pale snowflake in the storm

Is false to some imagined norm?

 

Recalling then what surely was

The earliest bounty of Creation:

That not a blade among the grass

But flaunts its difference with elation,

Let us devoutly take no blame

If similar does not mean the same.

 

And grateful for the wit to see

Prospects through doors we cannot enter,

Ah! Let us praise Diversity

Which holds the world upon its center.

Praise con amour’ or furioso

The large, the little, and the soso.

 

Rejoice that under cloud and star

The planet’s more than Maine or Texas.

Bless the delightful fact there are

Twelve months, nine muses, and two sexes;

And infinite in earth’s dominions

Arts, climates, wonders, and opinions.

 

Praise ice and ember, sand and rock,

Tiger and dove and ends and sources;

Space travelers, and who only walk

Like mailmen round familiar courses;

Praise vintage grapes and tavern Grappas,

And bankers and Phi Beta Kappas;

 

Each in its moment  justified,

Praise knowledge, theory, second guesses;

That which must wither or abide;

Prim men, and men like wildernesses;

And men of peace and men of mayhem

And pipers and the ones who pay ‘em.

 

Praise the disheveled, praise the sleek;

Austerity and hearts-and-flowers;

People who turn the other cheek

And extroverts who take cold showers;

Saints we can name a holy day for

And infidels the saints can pray for.

 

Praise youth for pulling things apart,

Toppling the idols, breaking leases;

Then from the upset apple-cart

Praise oldsters picking up the pieces.

Praise wisdom, hard to be a friend to,

And folly one can condescend to.

 

Praise what conforms and what is odd,

Remembering, if the weather worsens

Along the way, that even God

Is said to be three separate Persons.

Then upright or upon the knee,

Praise Him that by His courtesy,

For all our prejudice and pains,

Diverse His Creature still remains.

(Phyllis McGinley)