From outside perhaps
you have settled that I am
a stripped and bare tree
though it keeps its scent beneath
first blossom of the plum tree

Meaning

From outside you have no doubt settled that I am a bare, stripped tree, though the first plum blossom keeps its scent beneath.

Commentary

Part Three: Takekawa

　Thinking she had been quick about it, Kaoru sent this back without a pause, and added that in that case she had better come and brush the sleeve against it herself. The women called out that it was the scent rather than the color that mattered, and crowded round him until they were near to tugging at his sleeve. Tamakazura came out from within and said under her breath that they might spare a man so sober that he put them all to shame. Kaoru thought that he had been given the name of a sober man, and a dispiriting name it was. The sting of it stayed with him, and late in the same month, when the plums were at their best, it sent him to call on the Fujiwara Chamberlain so as not to be thought a man without feeling.

　"Mogiki" is a tree stripped of its branches and leaves, the image of something with no charm in it. From outside, he says, you have settled it that I am such a thing, but the blossom keeps its scent beneath, out of sight. He sets her own closing phrase at the end of his own poem and changes only the line before it, and the reply is airtight. The words that follow, that she should brush the sleeve against it, come from the Kokinshu poem about a plum and the sleeve of whoever has touched it, so that verse and narration run on together. It is also the first place where Kaoru's irritation at being taken for merely sober comes into the open.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

From outside perhaps you have settled that I am a stripped and bare tree though it keeps its scent beneath first blossom of the plum tree

From outside perhaps
you have settled that I am
a stripped and bare tree
though it keeps its scent beneath
first blossom of the plum tree