The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

trance-like mating of the sea and the land. They were
joined in mutual deceit, the ship wagging a seductive
tail and pulling coyly away again with a threatening
bleat on its whistle, moving away and then coming in
again. What a naked, unstable mechanism!
From the east window he could see the confusion
of the harbor frozen under a smoky mist, but an
unshining harbor was not a harbor, for a harbor is a
row of white teeth bared tensely at a shining sea. The
teeth of piers eaten at by the sea. It had to shine like a
dentist’s office and smell of metal and water and
antiseptic, with cruel derricks pushing down overhead
and antiseptics sinking the ships into a motionless
sleep, and perhaps, from time to time, a trace of
blood.
The harbor and this little signal room. The image of
the harbor taken and firmly impounded as toll, until he
could almost fancy that it was a ship grounded high on
the rocks. There were more than a few likenesses to
a dental office: the simplicity and the efficient
disposition of the instruments, the freshness of the
whites and the primary colors, the readiness for a
crisis that could come at any time, the warped window
frames gnawed at by the sea winds. And the watch,
solitary in the field of white plastic, carrying on an
intercourse almost sexual with the sea, through the