#017 千早ぶる

千早ぶる
神代もきかず
龍田川
からくれないに
水くくるとは

chihayaburu kamiyo mo kikazu tatsuta-gawa karakurenai ni mizu kukuru to wa

Ariwara no Narihira

the venerable old gods were not even asked -- it is for herself that the Tatsuta River tie-dyes the water crimson (trans. Köy Deli)

magnificence not seen since the age of gods in the Tatsuta River the water is tie-dyed a deep crimson red  (trans.  Jane Reichhold)

Parsing

chihayaburu
pillow-word epiteth usedof gods (awesome, majestic, imperious...)
kamiyo mo kikazu
age-of-the-gods | even | heard-not
Tatsuta-gawa
Tatsuta | -river
karakurenai ni
Chinese crimson | locative particle
mizu kukuru to wa
water | tie-dyed | for | inverted grammar marker/!

Crib
The Tatsuta river has tie-dyed its water Chinese crimson, never has it been heard of, even in the age of the imperious gods!

(Another possibility - without asking/telling the gods?)

Devices

1. Makurakotoba - A pillow word (eptiteth syllable filler) on the first line –
2. Personification of the river –
3. Grammatical inversion. The first two lines grammatically follow the last three; there is a phrasal pause at the end of line two with the end-of-sentence particle of negation 'zu'.

4. Kigo for Autumn -- Princess Tatsuta
5. Utamakura - A place with culturally conventional poetic allusions and intertextual references.

(In Autumn the Tatsuta River is said to turn red with the fall of Red Maple leaves.)

chihayaburu	千早ぶる	pillow word epiteth used of ‘god(s)’
kamiyo	神代	ancient times, age of the gods
mo	も	also, too, as much as, even, about
kikazu	きかず	negative (zu) sentence ending form of  to hear, to listen (to tell, inform, read to, sing about).
Tatsuta	龍田	name of river
kawa, -gawa	川	river
karakurenai	からくれない	(Chinese) crimson, deep red
ni	に	Locative particle;
mizu	水	water
kukuru	くくる	to tie, bind, tie-dye
to	と	conjunctive particle
wa	は	final particle of inverted word order