In my living room right now, I can hear the news announcer reading the names of the people slaughtered at Virginia Tech on Monday.
High school valedictorians, a Holocaust survivor, freshman from Centreville, a senior from Vienna, the list is still not complete tonight, Tuesday night.
In my comfortable home, it still seems awful. It makes my skin crawl to think of such abject disregard for human life. What has happened to a mind that allows it to unhinge and rage in random violence?
When Olivia called Monday I already knew that she was OK. Her dad had called earlier in the day - as soon as it became evident that something terrible happened in Blacksburg.
But it felt good to hear her voice and to know that she was not working from the Blacksburg office that day. She was in Pulaski.
When I hung up it occurred to me that many parents thought their kids were safe on the rolling grounds of Virginia Tech. Their worst fears were bad grades as a result of too much partying. It never entered their minds that a killer would come to their child's classroom and snuff out his or her life as if he had the right to do it.
Like others, I tuned into the convocation on Tuesday. I listened while I worked. I wondered, 'What do you say to a country of broken hearts?'
It turned out that poetry was the cure.
After speeches by the president of the university, the governor, President Bush and other religious leaders and university staff, the organizers of the event wisely let Nikki Giovanni wrap things up. Giovanni, a noted poet and English professor at Virgina Tech, came to the stage, a petite black woman with close-cropped blonde hair wearing a mannish suit and loose tie. On her lapel sparkled the word Hokie.
Truthfully, I have never been so proud to be a writer. Her words. Her powerful, well-chosen words touched the pain, gave it a voice and acknowledged it. And then she told the owners of that powerful emotion not to let it drown out who they are.
Giovanni stood powerfully despite her size, telling the students, parents, faculty that they would survive this dark night of the soul. Herself a breast cancer survivor, Giovanni told the audience that they -not the tragedy - would prevail.
I am honored to repeat her words:
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"We are Virginia Tech.
"We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech.
"We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech.
"We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech.
"The Hokie Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the 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 are Virginia Tech. "
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I hope you had the opportunity to hear her speak these words because her fierceness, her boldness filled the hearts of those gathered and in the cheers following her speech the familiar words from sporting events started sporadically at first and then grew to a thundering crescendo. "Let's go Hokies!" "Let's go Hokies!"
It could have been a scene from a movie. One day it probably will be. But today it was real. It was authentic. It was spontaneous. It was magnificent.
Yes, let's go Hokies. Let's live despite these deaths. Let's go Hokies. Let's live lives that honor those taken from us. Let's go Hokies. Let's keep this tragic day from defining your lives, your university.
In these healing days, all Americans - even Wahoos and Tarheels - are Hokies.
Let's go Hokies.
You - and we - will prevail.
