After-Music

By Conrad Hilberry

A new collection by esteemed Michigan poet Conrad Hilberry, his sixth full-length book of poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Release date: Jan 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9780814335222

Conrad Hilberry

Conrad Hilberry is emeritus professor of English at Kalamazoo College and author of several books of poetry, including The Fingernail of Luck, Player Piano, and Sorting the Smoke, and co-editor of Contemporary Michigan Poetry: Poems from the Third Coast (Wayne State University Press, 1988).

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After Music

POEMS BY CONRAD HILBERRY

© 2008 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

12 11 10 09 08      5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hilberry, Conrad.

After-music : poems / by Conrad Hilberry.

    p. cm. — (Made in Michigan writers series)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8143-3352-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8143-3352-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

I. Title.

PS3558.I384A69 2008

811’.54—dc22

2007024010

This book is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the DeRoy Testamentary Foundation for the support of the Made in Michigan Writers Series.

Designed by The DesignWorks Group

Typeset by Maya Rhodes

Composed in Mrs Eaves, Bee Three T, and Jefferson

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8143-3522-2

For Marion, Marilyn, Jane, and Ann

CONTENTS

1. SWEET GREASE

Mario

Moon

A Bird

Numbers

Winter Solstice

Variations on Antonio Machado’s Caminante

Let’s Say I’m Sad

Open

Black Car Blues

Blessing the Animals

After-Music

2. HOW THE JUICES LEAP

Oboe

Egg

Poker

Clue

Passenger-Side Mirror

Cherry Pie

Quatrain

Moustache

Alarm Clock

Runoff

Hunch

Negative Space

Mousetrap

Electric Collar

Small Gray Box with Three Wires

Deaf Ear

Waning Moon

3. STEERING BY PHEROMONES

Early Storm

A Clutch of Mammals

Path to the Cabin

Scramble Competition Polygyny

Dust Mites

The Fly

Hippocampus

Exits

4. ONE MATCH FLARING

Wise Man

Joseph

The Animals

Adam’s Christmas

The Woman from Chiapas

Christmas, Mexico

Script for a Cold Christmas

Elevator Music

Christmas Night

Midnight

December 26

Shepherd

5. BIRD WITH THE DOWNCAST BEAK

Self-Portrait as Waterfall

Finding the Way

Crete: The Diktaean Cave

Daughter in New York

Blood Work

Radiation

The Visit

Hurtle

No Clocks

Pelican

A Dialogue between the Body and Soul

Music

Silence

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE Sweet Grease

MARIO

How did he get in Portuguese 202?

He’s from Brazil, he speaks Portuguese—

a Brazilian kind of Portuguese, folding in

some rainy toucan calls. Do you object?

Well, he makes the rest of us seem . . .

But he charms us. The syllables run

like vines in a baffling forest where

we’ve never been. His eyes look down

from the canopy. When he’s called

to the blackboard, his letters have curious

tails, like fibery strands of meaning

coming loose. He sits at one side

toward the back, looks out at the starlings

bobbing and strutting on the grass.

What birds is he imagining? His eyes

settle on us, one by one, a tuft

of jungle feathers landing on a branch.

We come to class early, wanting to feel

the humidity change when Mario walks in.

Don’t listen to Mario, the professor says.

But we do, his talk throatier, slurred,

faint drums and hungry insects underneath

the ornate Lisbon churches in the text,

the situation at the travel desk,

the doctor’s office. Mario

is what we came for, we now believe.

We lose verbs and pronouns somewhere

in the underbrush. We may fail the course.

Students. Students. The language

has rules, conventions, idioms.

Mario does not resist. He studies, takes

the tests. But we can’t seem to hold on

to the bank. We slip into some tributary

of the Amazon, slow swirls and eddies,

silt of a continent drifting toward

the sea, and in our ears Mario’s dark

Portuguese, snakes tangled in tree roots,

bats dodging and dipping, now that it’s

nightfall, out of the cave of his