The flowering of the rod

Frida Kahlo (self portrait)

I go where I love and where I am loved,
into the snow;

I go to the things I love
with no thought of duty or pity;

I go where I belong, inexorably,
as the rain that has lain long

in the furrow; I have given
or would have given

life to the grain;
but if it will not grow or ripen

with the rain of beauty,
the rain will return to the cloud;

the harvester sharpens his steel on the stone;
but this is not our field,

we have not sown this;
pitiless, pitiless, let us leave

The-place-of-a-skull
to those who have fashioned it.

-  The Flowering of the Rod, H.D.

Partly brave and partly good

Roots by Frida Kahlo

"To have in this uncertain world some stay
which cannot be undermined, is
of the utmost consequence."
                                         Thus wrote 
a woman, partly brave and partly good, 
who fought with what she partly understood.
Few men about her would or could do more, 
hence she was labeled harpy, shrew, and whore.

- Adrienne Rich, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law