The following is from the poem that concluded the convocation yesterday for the Virginia Tech community in which President George W. Bush attended as well.

The video comes after the 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 fearlessly

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 ruled army

neither does a 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 heart and hand

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 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