This poem is called "This Bottle Belonged to Carlota,"
and I will explain a couple of things in it.
Gump's is a well-known antique art object
store in San Francisco, mostly oriental.
Carlota is the wife of the Emperor of Mexico who--
she went mad after her husband was slain by the Mexicans.
Grasshopper Hill is the English translation for Chapultepec.
And Clarence, to whom I ostensibly wrote the poem,
runs a little store that I call the Gump's of Bernalillo.
He vacillates between moments of great machismo
and utter femininity, and I love him.
"Clarence, who owns the Gump's of Bernalillo,
gave me a green-white onyx bottle,
which he said that shattered Empress carried in her flight
from Mexico to France.
The perfume in that bottle bled all
over the frivolous satins and the betrayed crystal heart.
Clarence flew into a rage when I said
I didn't quite believe his tale about the ownership
of that fine bottle.
'I'm in the antique business,' he announced.
'I don't live by selling stories,
a legend with each purchase.
I admit quite frankly that I stretch the truth sometimes.
So do you.' He flounced a peacock fan,
and I sat obediently to hear how Carlota flourished it at some
fantastic supper or such ball when Maximilian was Emperor
and she his bride.
She touched an earlobe with this stopper,
dreaming, practicing a gesture that we caught
when the mad summer's mirror illuminated the cameo
profile across the insane century
since she turned into rain.
Carlota flutters up the Grasshopper Hill--
a moth with gauzy fans--
hovers by the carriage shed where that pomp and splendored
husband met the firing squad.
She drowns in ceremonial scent.
Clarence, you're correct.
The bottle's spiked with madness,
and ritual moments of old perfume fan
through our breathless bones.
A myth comes with its fragrant truth intact,
a stony bottle with its perfume gone."