The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

green changed, rose and swelled into an uneasy
white. The sea lost its serenity.
Even as it rose it broke at the skirts, and ragged
spots of white from its high belly like a call of
inexpressible sorrow became a sharply smooth yet
infinitely cracked wall of glass, like a vast spray. As it
rose and broke, the forelocks were combed a
beautiful white, and as it fell it showed the neatly
arrayed blue-white of its crown, and the lines of white
became a solid field of white; and so it fell, like a
severed head.
The spread and the falling away of foam. Little
patches of foam trailing off to sea like lines of water
bugs.
Foam trailing off over the sand like sweat from the
back of an athlete at the end of his exertions.
What delicate changes passed over the white
monolith of the sea as it came in upon the shore and
broke. The myriad confusion of thin waves and the
fine partings of the foam became in desperation an
infinity of lines spewed out over the sea as from
silkworms. What a subtle evil, overcoming by sheer
force even as it took into itself this delicate white.
Four fifteen.
The sky in its upper reaches was blue. It was an
affected, pompous sort of blue. He had seen a similar