Basho - On the back of the mirror, A spring unseen, A flowering plum-tree

人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅 (hito mo minu haru ya kagami no ura no ume): a spring no one sees; the plum on the back of the mirror. 人も見ぬ春 is a spring that not even people see; 鏡のうら is the back of a mirror, where a bronze mirror carried its cast design, plum among the commonest; 梅 is the plum, the first flower of the year. It is a New Year's verse, dated to the first month of 1692 by Shirane and Fitzsimons and to 1693 by the 1774 collection of Bashō's verses, and it has been read one way since the Edo commentaries: the plum no one turns the mirror over to see is the good that goes unseen, a person's virtue that no one knows. Shirane adds a second layer, that Bashō wrote it in a year he had shut his gate even to his disciples, so the hidden plum is also his own wish for retreat. The English follows R. H. Blyth's, from The Genius of Haiku of 1994, with his lines reordered.