Japanese Love-Songs (Poem by Frank Oliver Call)

Japanese Love-Songs

(In the Hokku manner)

By Frank Oliver Call

(1)

The white lotus-flower

Grows in the depths of the pool,

Love grows in my heart.

(2)

The peony flames crimson.

My heart's blood is far redder

Than its flame.

(3)

Sere iris leaves and dead blossoms.

Mist and drizzle of rain.

Where art thou?

(4)

Darkness. Shadows in my soul.

The vision of your face.

Dawn and music.

(5)

Hush of night. Perfumed breath of night.

A moth with flaming wings.

Come beloved.

Poem Analysis:

Frank Oliver Call’s “Japanese Love-Songs” is a delicate and evocative poetic sequence that draws from Japanese aesthetic traditions—especially the haiku—to express the intimacy, pain, and beauty of love through brief, vivid impressions. The five untitled poems in this sequence capture emotional states with sparse language, natural imagery, and powerful contrasts. Each poem, like a brushstroke in a minimalist painting, adds depth and mood to the whole.

Form and Style

Call borrows the minimalist style of Japanese poetry, especially the haiku and tanka forms. While these English adaptations do not strictly follow the 5-7-5 syllabic structure of haiku, they replicate its brevity, imagistic clarity, and emotional subtlety. The poems are compact yet layered with symbolic meaning, achieving a balance of restraint and intensity.

Each of the five poems is an isolated moment—a snapshot of love—moving from the blossoming of desire to longing, despair, memory, and sensual invitation. They function as both individual expressions and as a progressive emotional arc.

(1) The Awakening of Love

The white lotus-flower

Grows in the depths of the pool,

Love grows in my heart.

This poem likens the emergence of love to the lotus flower, a symbol rich in spiritual and aesthetic significance in both Eastern and Western traditions. The lotus grows from muddy waters yet blossoms pure and beautiful—a metaphor for love arising from within, transcendent yet rooted in the depths of emotion.

• Symbolism: The white lotus suggests purity, awakening, and possibly the sacred nature of love.
• Structure: The shift from external observation (the flower) to internal experience (the heart) reflects the quiet unfolding of feeling.

(2) The Passion of Love

The peony flames crimson.

My heart's blood is far redder

Than its flame.

In contrast to the calm purity of the lotus, the peony is a more voluptuous and sensual flower, often associated with passion and desire in Japanese symbolism. Here, it represents intense, even painful, emotion.

• Imagery: The crimson peony burning with color becomes a point of comparison for the speaker’s own “heart’s blood,” emphasizing the depth and violence of feeling.
• Tone: There is a desperate intensity to this verse—a suggestion that love is not only beautiful, but consuming.

(3) The Absence of Love

Sere iris leaves and dead blossoms.

Mist and drizzle of rain.

Where art thou?

This is a poem of loss and longing. The iris leaves are “sere” (withered), and the blossoms are dead—symbols of faded beauty and vanished joy. The mist and drizzle enhance the mood of desolation and uncertainty.

• Mood: This is the bleakest of the five, steeped in melancholy and yearning.
• Structure: The final line “Where art thou?” breaks the observational pattern with a direct emotional cry, starkly personal.

(4) The Memory and Hope of Love

Darkness. Shadows in my soul.

The vision of your face.

Dawn and music.

Here, the speaker moves inward, describing an emotional night—“shadows in my soul”—followed by a vision that brings light and beauty. The contrast between darkness and dawn speaks to the transformative power of love and memory.

• Progression: This verse charts a movement from despair to hope, from shadow to illumination.
• Imagery: The appearance of “dawn and music” suggests a resurgence of feeling, or perhaps a remembered joy.

(5) The Invitation of Love

Hush of night. Perfumed breath of night.

A moth with flaming wings.

Come beloved.

The final poem returns to sensuality and presence. The perfumed hush of night sets a tone of intimacy and anticipation. The image of a moth with flaming wings could represent either the danger of passion (drawn to the flame) or its beauty and intensity.

• Tone: This is an erotic and tender invocation—part invitation, part plea.
• Symbolism: The moth, drawn to flame, may represent the speaker, willingly approaching a potentially consuming love.

Themes

1. Nature as a Mirror of Emotion

Each poem draws on natural imagery—flowers, weather, animals, light—to mirror internal states. This is characteristic of Japanese poetry, where nature is not separate from human experience but an extension of it.

2. Impermanence and Ephemeral Beauty

There is a strong current of mono no aware—the Japanese aesthetic of appreciating the bittersweet transience of life and beauty. Blossoms fade, rain falls, darkness passes—yet in their brevity, these things become more poignant.

3. The Spectrum of Love

The poems trace love’s emotional arc:

• Emergence (1)
• Passion (2)
• Loss (3)
• Memory or healing (4)
• Renewed desire (5)

Call captures how love can be at once spiritual, sensual, joyful, and sorrowful, using restrained yet powerful language.

Cultural and Aesthetic Influences

Although written by a Canadian poet, these poems are clearly inspired by Japanese poetic aesthetics, particularly:

• Haiku and Tanka: Emphasis on nature, brevity, and suggestion.
• Zen influence: Stillness, contemplation, and emotional understatement.
• Imagism: Call was writing during a time when Western poets, like Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell, were also heavily influenced by Asian forms. His poems share their focus on clarity and precision.

Quiet Mastery in Miniature

“Japanese Love-Songs” by Frank Oliver Call is a masterclass in emotional compression and poetic subtlety. Through just a few carefully chosen images and words, Call traverses the emotional terrain of love—from first bloom to fiery longing, to absence, to memory, and finally to invitation.

Like traditional Japanese poetry, these songs ask us to feel more by saying less, and to find deep meaning in fleeting beauty. Quiet, restrained, and deeply moving, the sequence invites reflection—not just on love, but on the delicate impermanence of all things.

It is a poem that rewards rereading—and silence.