The Creature

I know of an ancient and formidable creature,
That itself devours members and entrails,
With the eagerness of the insatiable hunger.
Dwells along the valleys and mountains;
And at sea, ripping, in the manner of the abyss,
Stretches up all in strange convulsions.
Bring printed on the forehead the dark despotism;
Each look firing, cruel and tender,
It seems an expansion of selfishness and love.
Coldly contemplates the despair and the joy,
It Likes the hummingbird, as it likes the worm,
And girds to the heart the beautiful and the monstrous.
For it, the jackal and  the rolls are equal... just defenseless;
And walks undisturbed on the earth.
In the tree busting his first bud comes the leaf, which unfolds slow and sluggish,
then the flower, then the sighed Snitch.
Because this creature is in all work:
Spays the flower breast and corrupts its fruit.
And it is in this destroying that it doubles its strength.
Loves equal the pure and the impure;
Starts and restarts a perpetual job;
And smiling obeys the Godlike status.
Do you say this is death?.... 
I will say... this is Life.

Machado de Assis