Alias City

by Carol Frost

They were travelers, plotting river courses,
writing the genesis of unknown people,
fugitives with a revolver in one hand, reins in another,
merchants among the olive trees, euphorbias, mimosas,
emissaries, deserters. Some knew the native tongues;
they called themselves by new names
in the eastern twilight, different parts of their soul
never having learned to live together.
Skies burned. Dust covered the palms
and minarets as they arrived by the incandescent shore
of our city, each with his own little dreams and disasters.
Some remained, never to be heard of again.
Some left with caravans, wearing native dress — ephemerids.
Where are they? What are they used to?
The only preserved interview — concerning an artist and explorer.
 
Did he ever speak of his friends in X?
Never. The only thing he liked in X was his sister.
But did you know that he painted?
Oh yes! — some fine things: stemware,
a series of watercolors of shoebills and Abdim’s stork.

CAROL FROST was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. She was raised in the Northeast with an identical twin, and spent a year in her mother’s hometown of Vienna, where German became the first language she spoke. As a child, she first discovered poetry in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” soon followed by reading the work of John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Wallace Stevens. Frost was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and received a BA in English in 1967 from the State University College at Oneonta, New York. In 1977, she earned a master’s degree in literature and creative writing from Syracuse University.

Frost’s awards and honors include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, four Pushcart Prizes, and a Teacher/Scholar Award and grants from Hartwick College.

Frost has taught most recently at SUNY Potsdam, New England College, Bucknell University, and Hartwick College. She is now a professor of English and the Alfond Chair in Creative Writing at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida.