Strength in Words

While driving to the airport on Saturday, I was listening to the public radio station and heard a story about poet Nikki Giovanni and the convocation she delivered at Virgina Tech. It was so moving I was driven to tears. The emotion was the same when I read it in the University website.

Her words were uplifting and released with such potency that it made me believe in the power of the written word once again.

(Nikki Giovanni, delivered at the Convocation, April 17, 2007)

We are Virginia Tech

We are sad today

We will be sad for quite a while

We are not moving on

We are embracing our mourning

We are Virginia Tech

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly

We are brave enough to bend to cry

And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again

We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy

We know we did nothing to deserve it

But neither does a child in Africa

Dying of AIDS

Neither do the Invisible Children

Walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army

Neither does the baby elephant watching his community

Be devastated for ivory

Neither does the Mexican child looking For fresh water

Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed

By a boulder

Dislodged

Because the land was destabilized

No one deserves a tragedy

We are Virginia Tech

The Hokie Nation embraces

Our own

And reaches out

With open heart and mind

To those who offer their hearts and hands

We are strong

And brave

And innocent

And unafraid

We are better than we think

And not yet quite what we want to be

We are alive to imagination

And open to possibility

We will continue

To invent the future

Through our blood and tears

Through all this sadness

We are the Hokies

We will prevail

We will prevail

We will prevail

We are Virginia Tech