We'll Always Have Paris (14 page)
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 we 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 warm 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.
One of the greatest writers of science fiction and fantasy in the world
today, Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. He moved with his family to Los
Angeles in 1934. He has published some 500 short stories, novels, plays, scripts and poems
since his first story appeared in
Weird Tales
when he was twenty
years old. Ray Bradbury lives in Los Angeles.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite
HarperCollins author.
Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines
The Anthem Sprinters
Bradbury Speaks
The Cat’s Pajamas
Dandelion Wine
Dark Carnival
The Day it Rained Forever
Death is a Lonely Business
Driving Blind
Fahrenheit 451
Farewell Summer
From the Dust Returned
The Golden Apples of the Sun
A Graveyard for Lunatics
Green Shadows, White Whale
The Halloween Tree
I Sing the Body Electric!
The Illustrated Man
Let’s All Kill Constance
Long After Midnight
The Machineries of Joy
The Martian Chronicles
A Medicine for Melancholy
Moby Dick (screenplay)
Now and Forever
The October Country
One More for the Road
Quicker Than the Eye
R is for Rocket
Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1
Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2
S is for Space
The Small Assassin
Something Wicked this Way Comes
A Sound of Thunder
The Toynbee Convector
When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Town
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
We’ll Always Have Paris
Yestermorrow
Zen in the Art of Writing