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"Falling Near the Wall"
Compared to the big ones – their Garden, his wall – my fall was small. What saves my pride is that I still get up same as before, older, but not sinful, and together again.
What saves my pride, as I lie face up in my garden, at a nearby dark wall, what saves me is knowing other stories equal mine.
What saves our self-respect is knowing so many do this, that at the wall we fall in ones and twos, still seeing sunlight looking up through trees,
turning our head to see roots of grasses and already fallen leaves, to feel the ants crawl across our face, to hear the first worm turn near our ear.
Still, each fall is a surprise until it is not, until it is comfortable here. Or until it is not.
Not now.
-Gerald Gray
"When I began to paint at 50, I had already started on several decades of work with refugee survivors of torture. At that time, I was pleased to see no evidence of my work in my painting; for a while it was undoubtedly an escape. I am a colorist, I favor the Fauves, the Expressionists, the Canadian Group of Seven, the California Society of Six. My work was often dark."
"As a painter I have consciously tried to adhere to doing art first and foremost — the attempt to preserve beauty, which surely is one of the goals in achieving justice. Without justice, art is banned and books are burned."
Gerald Gray has dedicated his life to helping refugee survivors of torture. His work is internationally known and he has positively affected generations of people through the many rehabilitation and recovery programs he has instituted, worldwide.
Turning the Wound is not Gray's first foray into the art, prose, and poetry of political movements. In 1985, he created a quarterly publication, americas review, dedicated to the subject.