Numbe Sina Muwa Madalata Lyrics by Asanka Priyamantha Peiris

To your smiling moon-like face,
I am so drawn, the way a small moon
rises and glows through the clouds…//

The bees come buzzing to the flower,
why is that lovely sound rising as they fly?
I drink in the beauty with my eyes…//

Even though white mora flowers bloom all along the fence,
to just one flower, by its scent,
why are the bees so devoted?…//

A young man is quietly captivated by a girl, and the whole song is him trying to put words to what one look at her does to him. He opens by comparing her smiling face to the moon, and not just any moon, but a small one that rises and glows softly as it slips through the clouds. In Sinhala song the moon is the standing image of a calm, gentle beauty, light that soothes the dark rather than dazzles, so when he says her smiling face is like that little moon climbing through the clouds, he is saying her smile does not excite him so much as it settles him. He cannot look away.

Then he reaches for the image that carries the rest of the song, the bee and the flower. He watches bees come buzzing to a blossom and wonders aloud why that humming sound rises so sweetly as they fly to it, and all the while he is taking in her beauty the way the bee takes in the flower. In Sinhala love poetry the bee (bambara) drawn to a single flower is the oldest picture of a lover pulled toward the one he wants, helpless against the pull, the way a bee cannot resist a scent.

The last verse is where the longing turns into a gentle ache. White mora flowers bloom all along the fence, a whole row of them, every one of them in bloom, and yet the bees keep returning to one single flower. Why, he asks, are they so attached to that one, drawn by its fragrance alone, when so many others are right there? He is really asking about himself. With so many faces in the world, why has his heart fixed on this one girl and no other. That is the quiet wonder the song leaves you with, the helpless, sweet pull of being drawn to one person you cannot explain or escape.