“Mother, there’s nothing between us now, except for your death”: an approximation to Oscura palabra by José Carlos Becerra

Abstract

This current paper proposes a critical reading about Oscura palabra (1965), a poem by Mexican poet José Carlos Becerra. The main objective is to analyze how the poetic voice uses the natural elements to create a pantheistic link between the pain resulting from his mother’s death and external chaos. Building on this connection, the second part of the paper identifies how the poem opts for silence as a way to convey a grief that cannot be expressed through language. The proposed analysis leads to the conclusion of a grief paradox: the acceptance of the mother’s death faces the poet with the loss of his childhood and the recognition of his own orphanhood.