Wikasitha Pem Pokuru Piyum Lyrics by Amaradeva

The blooming lotus clusters of my love
were crushed under your feet as you went,
and today I turn my back on the world.
My beautiful woman.
My beautiful woman.

Tears in my heart, on the lonely bed at night,
sobbing by the upstairs window as the moon climbs,
with loving memories and our old story of love,
may the fire of separation never burn you.
May the fire of separation never burn you.

In the empty mansion where loneliness reigns,
when the moon sinks into the thick dark,
in the jeweled kingdom of your life
may lamps of gems blaze on, lighting your way.
May lamps of gems blaze on, lighting your way.

A man is letting go of the woman he loves, and instead of cursing his loss he blesses her on her way. That is the whole heart of this song. He pictures his love as a cluster of lotus flowers in full bloom, and then he tells her those very flowers were crushed under her feet as she walked out of his life. In Sinhala the lotus is the image of something pure and beautiful that has finally opened, so to have it trampled is to watch the best thing in you broken just as it came to flower. After that there is nothing left for him in the ordinary world, so he turns his back on it. The word he reaches for, renunciation, is the language of someone who walks away from worldly life altogether, the way a person might leave for the monastery. He calls her “my beautiful woman” even now, with no bitterness in it.

The middle of the song is the long, sleepless night that follows. He is alone on the bed, crying, leaning by the upstairs window while the moon rises, going over old memories of their love like a story he keeps rereading. And out of all that pain comes the line that makes this song what it is: may the fire of separation never burn you. Viraha, the ache of being parted, is one of the oldest themes in Sinhala song, and here he carries the whole weight of it himself so that she will be spared it. He would rather hold the fire alone than have it touch her.

The last verse turns into a kind of farewell prayer. He sees her future as an empty mansion where loneliness has taken the throne, the night so dark the moon itself has gone down into it. Then he wishes against that darkness directly. He calls her life a jeweled kingdom and asks that lamps made of gems keep burning around her, lighting the way through every dark hour she meets without him. Gem-lamps are an old image of the richest, steadiest light a person could be given. What the listener is left holding is not anger but a strange tenderness, a man who has lost everything choosing, with his last words, to wish her nothing but light.