Chihayaburu kami no kokoro no aruru umi ni kagami o irete katsu mitsuru kana - Tosa Nikki(English Translation & Meaning)

ちはやぶる神のこゝろのあるゝ海に
鏡を入れてかつ見つるかな

Roma-ji: Chihayaburu kami no kokoro no aruru umi ni kagami o irete katsu mitsuru kana
English Translation: Into the sea, wild
with the raging heart of gods
swift and mighty, we
cast the mirror, and at once
saw that heart reflected clear
Meaning: Into the sea, stormy with the raging heart of its mighty god, we cast our mirror—and at once we saw that heart laid bare.
Commentary: 44 The Fifth Day of the Second Month: The God of Sumiyoshi and the Mirror

On the fifth day of the second month, the party at last set out from Izumi-no-nada toward the anchorage of Otsu. A pine grove stretched as far as the eye could see. Everyone was suffering, and so they composed poems. Before long the master of the boat urged them to row quickly while the weather was good, and the steersman told the boatmen, "Orders from the master's boat: haul on the towropes before the morning north wind rises." His words happened to come out in thirty-one syllables, just like a poem. That day, thanks to everyone's praying all day long that the waves would not rise, neither wind nor waves arose.
On this day the mother of the lost child also composes a poem. The diary calls her "the mother of the one now gone"; she is the mother of the daughter who died in Tosa. Sumiyoshi lies around present-day Sumiyoshi Ward in Osaka, and its god was worshipped as a deity of seafaring.
Suddenly the wind began to blow, and however hard they rowed, the boat was driven back until it seemed about to sink. The steersman said that the god of Sumiyoshi was up to his usual ways and must want something, and urged them to make an offering. They offered paper offerings as told, but the wind blew all the harder and the waves rose ever higher. The steersman then said that the god was not pleased with paper, which was why the boat would not move, and that they must offer something he would truly like. So, saying that though one has two eyes one has only a single mirror, they threw the mirror into the sea. It was a great pity. At once the sea grew calm as a mirror. Seeing this, a certain person composed this poem.
The diarist writes with irony that this was a god ill-suited to such names as the grass of forgetting of Suminoe or the slender pines on its shore; that they had clearly seen the god's heart in the mirror; and that the steersman's heart was the god's heart. The next day, the sixth, the party reaches Naniwa and enters the river mouth.

The first line, "Chihayaburu," is a pillow word for "kami" (god). The second line, "kami no kokoro no," "the god's heart," continues into the third, "aruru umi ni," "into the raging sea," overlaying the raging of the god's heart with the raging of the sea.
The fourth line, "kagami o irete," means "casting the mirror into the sea." In the final line, "katsu mitsuru kana," "katsu" means "at once, immediately," "tsuru" is the attributive form of the perfective auxiliary "tsu," and "kana" an exclamatory particle.
The poem expresses how the sea grew calm as a mirror the moment the mirror was thrown in, as though the god's heart had at once been reflected in it for all to see. Through the idea of seeing something reflected in a mirror, it carries the irony that the greedy heart of the god was laid bare.
Author: Ki no Tsurayuki
Source: Tosa Nikki
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