Kuretake no yoyo no miyako to kiku kara ni kimi wa chitose no utagai mo nashi

English Translation

Hearing it is called
the capital of many
reigns, like bamboo joints
I have no doubt at all that
a thousand years are yours here

Meaning

Hearing that this is called the capital of many reigns, as the bamboo has many joints, I have no doubt at all that a thousand years are yours.

Commentary

36 The Capital of Many Reigns

When the former High Priestess of Ise was living in that province, the Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi went as a messenger from the palace and composed this poem. Her reply has not come down. The prose adds only that the place where she lived was at Take, and was known as the capital of Take.
The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, who rose to that office and took his name from his residence near the embankment of the Kamo river. He is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals, and in the thirty-fifth section goes as a messenger to Ōuchiyama. The former High Priestess had served at the Ise shrine and left that office.
The setting is Take in Ise province, where she was living; the prose explains that the place was called the capital of Take.
What prompted the poem was his going there as a messenger from the palace.
The prose says her reply is not known. The section closes on that and on the note about the place name. The poem was later included in the Shinchokusen-shū.

The first line is a fixed epithet leading to the word that follows: the space between one bamboo joint and the next was called by the same word as a generation.
The capital of many reigns is thus arrived at through bamboo, and the place name Take, which is also the word for bamboo, is what draws the epithet in. The device ties the epithet to the place name itself.
The third line means: on merely hearing it, at once. He has not seen the place prosper; he has only heard what it is called.
The closing states flatly that a thousand years are beyond doubt. From joints upon joints, to reigns upon reigns, to a thousand years, the poem builds one measure of length on another. It is a poem of greeting, praising the place he has come to.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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