WEBVTT

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I want to read a poem.

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We're all gathered here, and
we've been through the program,

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and we've been through
its many iterations

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all of these decades.

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I'm interested in
the next 50 years,

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and who's going to be coming.

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And I'd like to read a poem
for those future U of A alumni.

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This is for whoever
they are, wherever

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they're going to come
from, but they will come

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and they'll tell
our story to you.

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Let me find this.

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This Is called "A
House Called Tomorrow."

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You are not 15 or 12 or 17.

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You are a hundred wild centuries
and 15, bringing with you,

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in every breath and in
every step, everyone

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who has come before you, all
the yous that you have been,

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the mothers of your mother,
the fathers of your father.

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If someone in your
family tree was trouble,

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a hundred were not.

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The bad do not win, not finally,
no matter how loud they are.

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We simply would not be
here if that were true.

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You are made fundamentally
from the good.

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With this knowledge,
you never march alone.

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You are the breaking
news of the century.

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You are the good who has
come forward through it

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all, even if so many
days feel otherwise.

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But think, when you were a
child and learned to speak,

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it's not that you
didn't know words.

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It's that from the
centuries, you knew so many

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and it's hard to choose the
words that will be your own.

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From those centuries
we human beings

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bring with us the simple
solutions and songs, the river

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bridges and star charts
and song harmonies,

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all in service to a
simple idea that we can

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make a house called tomorrow.

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What we bring finally into
the new day, every day,

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is ourselves.

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And that's all we need to start.

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That's everything we
require to keep going.

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Look back only for as long
as you must, then go forward

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into the history you will make.

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Be good, then better.

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Write books, cure disease, make
us proud, make yourself proud.

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And those who came before
you, when you hear thunder,

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hear it as their applause.

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