I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH
I met Nikki Giovanni when our respective book tours crossed paths many years ago. She is one of the most accessible, generous, and fierce warrior women on the planet, definitely written into my Book of the Blessed.
Below is her chant-poem she spoke this morning at the convocation, the first meeting of the student body, faculty and administration since the massacre yesterday. (See and hear her high oratory at http://www.cnn.com/ under heading “Cheers, ‘Let’s go Hokies chants memorialâ€?.)
Prior to her speaking, an Imam spoke, a Buddhist, a Christian minister, and a Jewish woman Rabbi spoke eloquently accompanied by a soulful woman Hebrew reader, reading the couplets of the poem from Ecclesiastes, “For Everything There is a Season…â€?
And then after all others had spoken, including the President of Virginia Tech, the Governor of Virginia, and The President of the United States, George Bush… then Nikki took the stage…
Her chant-poem from the powerful broadcasting towers of her heart and mind, spoke of real and far-reaching thoughts….. and she and her words received the long, longer and longest standing ovation of the day… Why? I think many would say because she reached authentically into the souls of those present, with thoughts gallactically beyond the usual ceremonial words that seem nowadays, so rote and impersonal they could fit any solemn occasion.
Her poet-words were not only specific to the soul of her community, they were specific to the world soul. The headline of my article here could as easily have been: “Poet’s Words Far Outshine Those From the Leader of the Free World.â€?
Nikki Giovanni’s Chant-Poem
We Are Virginia Tech
We are sad today
and 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 sad enough
to know 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 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
and reaches out with open hearts 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, and
not quite what we want to be
We are alive
to the imagination and the possibilities
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.
(Transcribed from rough audio by cpe: any errors are mine and not Dr. Giovanni’s. Line breaks, capitalization, and punctuation therein are only speculative.)