Blog Post

America

by Ray Bradbury

Feast of Venerable Isaac I of Optina

Anno Domini 2020, August 22

We are the dream that other people dream.

The land where other people land

When late at night

They think on flight

And, flying, here arrive

Where the fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

Refuse to see

We be what all the world would like to be.

Because we hive within this scheme

The obvious dream is blind to us.

We do not mind the miracle we are,

So stop our mouths with curses.

While all the world rehearses

Coming here to stay.

We busily make plans to go away.

How dumb! newcomers cry, arrived from Chad.

You’re mad! Iraqis shout,

We’d sell our souls if we could be you.

How come you cannot see the way we see you?

You tread a freedom forest as you please.

But, damn! you miss the forest for the trees.

Ten thousand wanderers a week

Engulf your shore,

You wonder what their shouting’s for,

And why so glad?

Run warn those souls: America is bad?

Sit down, stare in their faces, see!

You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.

In tides of immigrants that this year flow

You still remain the beckoning hearth they’d know.

In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme

You are the dream that other people dream.

*From They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poetry of Ray Bradbury (Lancaster, PA: Stealth Press, 2002), 344-345.

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