Sakakiba o te ni torimochite inoritsuru kami no yo yori mo hisashikara namu - Shika Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

榊葉を手に取り持ちて祈りつる
神の代よりも久しからなむ

Roma-ji: Sakakiba o te ni torimochite inoritsuru kami no yo yori mo hisashikara namu
English Translation: Sacred sakaki leaves
held up within our hands,
we have prayed;
longer than the age of gods
may it endure
Meaning: We have prayed holding sacred sakaki leaves in our hands; may it endure even longer than the age of the gods.
Commentary: Book Five Celebration Poems 165

Set against a rite in which worshippers pray holding sakaki leaves offered before the gods, the poem wishes that the reign or life being celebrated may last even longer than the age of the gods.
Invoking the age of the gods, more remote than the beginning of the human world, and then wishing for something longer still, gives the poem the grand blessing proper to celebration verse. Its calm, devout cadence recalls the setting of sacred kagura rites.

First line, "Sacred sakaki leaves," names the evergreen leaves offered before the gods, their unchanging green fitting a prayer for permanence.
Second line, "held up within our hands," depicts concretely the ritual act of taking up the sakaki.
Third line, "we have prayed," uses the attributive of the perfective tsu, leading into "gods" and pointing to the deities prayed to until now.
Fourth line, "longer than the age of gods," refers to the distant time when the gods were said to rule. Poems invoking gods continue toward the end of the book, in 170, "the gods too planted," and 171, "the living god."
Fifth line, "may it endure," joins hisashi to the particle namu, which voices a wish directed at another: may it last long.
Author: Akazome Emon
Source: Shika Wakashu
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