If one has no scars, one becomes blind to the plight of the rest of the people in our world.
If one bears scars, as a heavy burden, one risks to identify with only the wounded of our world.
If one hides one’s scars, will time have to remind one, repeatedly of the learning and the lesson, uncovering the wisdom of our experience in this world?
If one can must carry one’s scars as a medal of patriotism, as a badge of sacrifice, as a flag of struggle, as a robe of survival, as a pennant from punishment, as a mantle of purity, as confirmation of righteousness, how then can one shed the uniform to hide in that closet of peace?
Scars of adolescent hands and hearts hint, at an initiation ritual, conducted by old men, which we have forgotten, from time immemorial, from an ancient time.
Symbol.
Scars of ritual in ancient caves, painted the wounded mammoth, the Siberian shaman, in trance, the essential stipulation, that he be a wounded man, bearing a memorial of time, of the wound, of the womb.
Symbol.
If one believes it is the cross, that the christ bore, consider the spear as symbol, the wound in his side which in time will remain memorial, will never heal or scar.
Symbol.
Scars in our soil… wounds that men will not heal. Possibly ever. Probably never. Land was misappropriated. Farming is mismanaged. Wounds cut into the deep soil. Trickles turn to ravines. The runoff water chortles orange. The clouds rage black. The soil runs red… runs to the ocean to drown… life giving soil lost at sea, never to know a home, never to come back.
The clouds have drained, the sky returns to black, a promise of hope in glittering stars. Life giving soil lost at sea, nowhere to return… never to settle… never to be seen… as scars.
Shanty township Southern Africa, a scar on the face of this soil, in streets of dust, in seeds of despair, sowed into the scars, scattered in streets of wind, blown over sand-dunes to suburban safety, the desperate housewives, the husbands hardworking, to keep children safe behind electric lines, keep children sound from electrocution or shock of seeing the world outside, to keep them speaking in English in class of elocution, to keep children speechless in their confusion, keeping children deluded, that all this is just, that it shall always be so, from dust to dust, leading long lines to the funerals at dusk, leaving only some red lines on a map, on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust.
Scarring only some backs, still bleeding, scaring only the many burning hearts, burning revolutionary art, burning hopes, burning dreams, burning bridges, burning homes, burning houses, burning food farms and burning flesh, burnings crosses, burning blood, burning all hope of bringing happiness, leaving only some blessed souls, giving some only blessing with ashes to ashes, but with only one Faith’s burning heart.
Scarred children soldiers in the streets, scars of horror, which never hide in addiction nor drunkenness, scars of terror, which would never happen in togetherness, stolen land, by the bible and the bullet, stolen land, by the sanctions, by the spear, by the state of the nation, by the State, by the state of the heart.
If one once believed in everlasting peace, if one once believed in healers, in hospitals, in hope, the scars speak always the truth, that we are still deceived, that this it not temporary, this not a dead end, that this is not the end, that this is nothing but the start.
If one once believed in an unspecified truth, in the unspoken eleventh language, that keeps us apart, the unspeakable violence, that kept us wounded, that still keeps us wounded, inside scars that will never heal, for it has always been “us and them” from the start, from birth until death do us part.
Scarred. Do you bare with you also, the broken home, the broken family, with the broken child, the aching heart, the mother and sister, the father and son, the scars that will not heal, forever til death do us part…?
by Geoffrey Wright
© 05 May 2025, at Glenora Redemption, Cape Town, South Africa
PHOTOGRAPHY © Geoffrey Wright, Cape Town
Inspired by the wisdom and writings in the book “Iron John, Men and Masculinity”, by Robert Bly