Realizing What What Have

The WSJ Opinion Journal published a poem today by Ray Bradbury, (Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, etc.) entitled "America." It is subtitled "An Ode To Immigrants," but it really is not. Its' really a lament that Americans, so caught up with what is wrong with America, seem to lose sight of what is right with it. As poetry, I can't give it much but as a sentiment it seems right on. Especially the first and last lines:

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.

None of this is any reason, of course, to ignore what needs to be changed or to resist changes that seems likely to make us less "the dream that others dream." But, it is, I think, a reason leaven the outrage with a sense of proportion.