Death in Mexico. (1978). Detailed description

Included in Levertov’s 1978 collection Life in the Forest, “Death in Mexico” was published at a time when reflection and contemplation played crucial roles in her creative life. She was still grappling with her divorce from Mitchell Goodman, coming to terms with international violence even after the end of the vietnam War, and processing the pain of losing her mother. Several of her poems in Life in the Forest touch on the subject of her mother’s death, and others that do not mention it explicitly seem to hint at an underlying grief. Although many of the highly personal poems deal with the poet’s suffering, they never slip into the confessional mode she vocally discredited. Published the year after the event, “Death in Mexico” approaches the subject of loss from a unique angle to address more universally resonant images of death and dying.

The poem begins by establishing the ground scenario, fixing the reader in a period “two weeks after her fall, / three weeks before she died” and introducing the poem’s dramatic focal point, “the garden / began to vanish” (Poems 1972-1982 103). Rather than focus directly on her dying mother, Levertov tracks the passing of time and a degenerating physical condition through a description of the garden’s decline. Without its caretaker tending to it, the garden slips into a chaotic mess of broken fences, flourishing weeds, and littered children’s toys. Peripheral views of Levertov’s mother sneak in, mirroring the garden’s state and offering readers a view of her desperate condition. For instance, Levertov writes, “For two weeks no one watered it, except / I did, twice, but then I left. She was still conscious then,” implying a later loss of consciousness (103).

By taking the garden, rather than Levertov’s mother, as a primary subject, “Death in Mexico” avoids the problem of becoming overly abstract or sentimental. The garden provides a tangible image of deterioration and loss, making Levertov’s expression of pain more tangible as well. While it would be naive to say that the poem reduces abstract concerns with death to the physical, it does put those questions into symbolic language. By attaching meaning to previously unencumbered objects, we open up an opportunity to create new perspectives and generate new ideas.

“Death in Mexico” invites us to think about dying as a natural return to the untidy from an ordered ideal. Levertov writes that “there was green, still, / but the garden was disappearing—each day / less sign of the ordered” (104). She suggests that death may not be the wilting, drying up, and relinquishing of life that we often imagine. Rather, it might be an inevitable undoing of controlled existence, a return to the more organic “jungle green,” a time when old gods take “back their own” (104-105). Levertov, however, does not eschew the pain of loss or become overly optimistic. The stone gaze of the gods “is utterly still, fixed, absolute” (105). It does not allow for tenderness; nor does it recognize life, even as vines and scorpions crawl across its face.

As Levertov describes in “Talking to Grief,” another poem from Life in the Forest, she strives to live with her grief. That closeness and honesty allow for poems like “Death in Mexico,” in which she accepts death as a natural process while acknowledging the violence of nature.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Many of Levertov’s poems deal with religion directly and in very clear terms. Her interest in religion, however, does not cease when she delves into less specifically religious subject matter. How might a poem like “Death in Mexico” engage theological perspectives? Do you recognize in the poem any relationship between the Christian parable of the Garden of Eden and the stone representations of indigenous gods?

2. At the end of the poem Levertov acknowledges that she and her mother were both foreign to Mexico. How, then, does the sense of place add to the poem? Why is it important that “Her death / was not Mexico’s business”? And to what end does the title draw our attention to setting?

3. Read another poem from Life in the Forest that deals with the death of Levertov’s mother, “The 90th Year” or “A Soul-Cake,” for example. Look at line break, stanza, and indentation in a comparison of the poems’ structure. In what ways do they differ? Expand your discussion to general tone and feeling. How does Levertov seem to cope with and express her mother’s death differently?