Sunday

Within whiteness
his kaleidoscopic hand
occupies spaces.

Not the ones of the canvas, which
in their vastness are scarce.
It occupies moons

angels people saints.
It comes down rainbows to the
surface. It touches

memory innumerable
times: axis mundi
of the subject. In José Luiz

what existed is revealed,
that which went extinct
for being born. His gesture

knows the past
in a coherent form:
the one that was shifting

yesterday today and always.
On that plane something we have
and something we need is growing.

José Luiz affixes the
variables that his name
suggests. Beyond the S

the serpent is set in motion,
with its fully economical eye.
The axis mundi of the subject.

--Translated by Steven F. White

From White.

Edimilson de Almeida Pereira lives in Juiz de Fora in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He has published poetry and studies of Brazilian culture which include Corpo vivido, A roda do mundo (with Ricardo Aleixo), Negras raízes mineiras: Os arturos, and Mundo encaixado: Significação da cultura popular. He teaches Brazilian literature at the Federal University in Juiz de Fora.

Steven F. White's study and translations of contemporary Afro-Brazilian poetry have appeared in Callaloo 18.4, 19.1, and 20.1. He is the co-author with Edimilson de Almeida Pereira of "Brazil: Analysis of the Interactions and Conflicts in a Multicultural Society" in Cultural Cartographies: Comparative Studies in Race, Ethnicity and Nationhood. He also translated the subtitles for the feature-length film Cruz e Sousa: O Poeta do Desterro (1999) by Brazilian director Sylvio Back. White's CD Transversions (2001) includes his translations set to music of poetry by Latin American and Spanish writers. His most recent volume of poetry is Fire that Engenders Fire/Fuego que engendra fuego. He teaches at St. Lawrence University.

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