Chitoseyama kami no yomaseru sakakiba no sakaemasaru wa kimi ga tame to ka - Senzai Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

千年山神のよませる榊葉の
栄えまさるは君がためとか

Roma-ji: Chitoseyama kami no yomaseru sakakiba no sakaemasaru wa kimi ga tame to ka
English Translation: On Mount Chitose
the sakaki leaves whose years
the god has counted
flourish all the more, they say,
for the sake of our lord
Meaning: On Mount Chitose, the sakaki leaves whose thousand years the god has counted flourish ever more, and that, they say, is for our lord's sake.
Commentary: Book Twenty Shinto Poems 1288

Headnote: "Composed on Mount Chitose in the province of Tanba as a kagura song, when I composed and presented poems for the Suki side at the same Great Thanksgiving Festival"
He composed this kagura song on Mount Chitose in Tanba when he presented poems for the Suki side at the same Great Thanksgiving Festival of Emperor Go-Toba as the preceding poem. The sakaki leaves of Mount Chitose whose years the god has counted flourish more, they say, for our lord's sake, he says. Overlaying the Suki place name Chitose, a thousand years, with a thousand years of life, he celebrates the reign: the sakaki the god has counted and guarded through the years flourish ever more for the sake of the sovereign's prosperity.
The author, "Fujiwara no Mitsunori Ason," was a Confucian scholar of the Southern House of the Fujiwara, a son of Fujiwara no Naganori, minister of the imperial household, and served as professor of letters.
This poem closes the book of poems on the gods and is also the last poem of all twenty books of the Senzai Wakashū. Where the opening poem, 1256, sought the traces of an imperial visit of old and recalled precedent, this one ends by praying for a thousand years of glory for the present reign, so a book that began by recalling the past closes with a prayer for the future. It forms a Yuki and Suki pair with the preceding poem, 1287.

First line, "Chitoseyama": a place in Tanba, a famous spot of the Suki province, its name, "a thousand years," carrying the wish for a long reign.
Second line, "kami no yomaseru": "yomu" means to count, and the line is read with "se" as the honorific "su" and "ru" as the attributive of the continuative "ri," "whose years the god has counted."
Third line, "sakakiba no": the sakaki leaves used in rites; like 1281 and 1282 in this book, it entrusts the permanence of the reign to sakaki.
Fourth line, "sakaemasaru wa": "that they flourish ever more," with "sakae," flourish, echoing the sound of "sakaki" in the third line.
Fifth line, "kimi ga tame to ka": "to ka" means "so they say," and breaking off here, the poem leaves a lingering overtone. Like "kimi ga yo no tame" in the fifth line of 1283 in this book, it closes the book by singing of the rites held for the sovereign's sake.
Author: Fujiwara no Mitsunori
Source: Senzai Wakashu
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