Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony Awards acceptance speech is a powerful, poetic tribute to Orlando

In the early hours of Sunday morning, 49 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in American history at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. On Sunday night, the Tony Awards went on as scheduled, dedicated to the victims. Broadway stars wore silver ribbons in their honor.

No single moment in the ceremony better expressed the theater community’s solidarity with those affected by the massacre than Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acceptance speech after winning the Tony for Best Original Score.

“I’m not freestyling,” the Hamilton creator and star began. “I’m too old. I wrote a sonnet instead.”

Miranda’s speech, written in verse, proved to be both a love letter to his wife Vanessa and a tear-jerking remembrance of the lives claimed by the tragedy:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done
She nudges me towards promise by degrees
She is a perfect symphony of one
Our son is her most beautiful reprise
We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they’re finished songs and start to play
When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day
The show is proof that history remembers
We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger
We rise and fall and light from dying embers
Remembrances that hope and love last longer
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
Cannot be killed or swept aside
I sing Vanessa’s symphony
Eliza tells her story
Now fill the world with music, love, and pride

Watch Miranda’s acceptance speech in full here:

Molly Fitzpatrick is senior editor of Fusion’s Pop & Culture section. Her interests include movies about movies, TV shows about TV shows, and movies about TV shows, but not so much TV shows about movies.