Federal Prison. Leavenworth, Kansas, 2 May, 1922.-Miss. Irene Benton.-Granada, Minnesota.
My dear comrade:
Isn't it a shame not to answer your letter since the 10th of last month? But I am not free, my dear friend, to write more than three letters a week. You know this, and I hope you will excuse my apparent negligence.
Your letter, so perfectly well calculated, to diffuse some warmth to my afflicted soul, was effective in its generous mission, and especially in the last part, where you say that your dear mother speaks to you about me; it touched the most delicate fibers of my heart, and it moved me to tears, because I thought about my own mother, dead after so many years. It's been 21 years! I was in prison during that time, punished for having denounced the bloody tyranny of Porifirio Díaz, and because of this, I could not be at her bedside. I could not give her my last kiss, nor hear her last words. This happened in México City, the 14th of June, 1900, some three years before my coming to this country as a political refugee in search of freedom. My thanks to you and to your dear mother for your affection for me, as expressed in your beautiful letter. Your recounting about the realization of the work in the fields and the one in preparation, is most interesting, as you have no idea how much I love the countryside, the forest, the mountains. "The men, you say, have been busy in the fields, preparing the soil to receive the seed. What world of emotions and thoughts provoke those few words in me, as I have also been a sower, although a sower of ideas! And I have also felt what the sower of seeds has felt in the generous depths of the earth, and I trust much more in the minds of my fellow man, and we both hope...and the agony he suffers with his waiting is also my torment. The most minute indications of ill fate crushes our heart, holding our breath, waiting for the crack of the crush of the ground, showing that the seed has sprouted, and I, with my compressed heart, wait for the word, the action, the gesture that indicates the germination of the seed in a fertile mind...The only difference between a sower of seeds and the sower of ideals resides in the time and the way of working; as with the first, has all night to rest and relax the tension from his limbs, and also waits until the season is favorable for his seedtime and only plants where the ground is generous; the latter does not have nights, nor seasons, all of the grounds deserve attention and work; plant in the spring as in the summer, day and night, night and day; in all seasons, under the heavens and anything that can be the quality of the mind; outside of time... Even when the lightning thunders in the heavens, where resides the arbiter of human destinies.
The sower of ideals does not stop his work, he continues toward a future looking with the eyes of the spirit, sowing, always sowing. Threatening fists, and all around may tremble and burn with the hate that emits from those whose interests benefit, leaving without cultivation of the minds of the masses...The sower of ideals does not draw back, the sower of ideals continues to sow, always sowing...far and close, here and there, under pale heavens illuminated by a yellow sun that, projecting his gloomy silhouettes against frowning horizons, feeling a presentiment of plalafarms over the floor, agitating its sinister arms like antennas of monstrous creatures created by fever or fed by madness, while huge black iron doors sleepily yawn for flesh and soul...The sower does not draw back, the sower continues planting, and this has been his task since immemorial time, this has been his fate, yet way before our race emerged dignified and erect from the wild forest, where since the beginning in the course of time, close to other quadrupeds and with the rest of the fauna of the quadrupeds, because the sower of ideals has always had a mission of combat, but serene and majestic, with an ample movement of arms, so ample that it seems to trace in the hostile air the orbit of the sun, faithfully sowing the seed, causing humanity to advance, regardless of obstacles, toward the future that he sees with the eyes of the spirit.
Your letter is so sweet...! Oh, my dear comrade! You are so gentle, like your mother. Yes, your affection calms me, it give me much happiness; thank you a million times. The clippings are very interesting and the drawings very cute. Now, good-bye!
I gave Rivera your message; he is very grateful. Fraternally yours, Ricardo FLORES MAGON