Hitha Dura Handa (Ayemath Adaren 2) Lyrics by Athma Liyanage

A moon far from the heart, hidden close to the eyes
Dreams take hold, and the loneliness is a moon
A memory lingers far away, the heart left aching
Could the love that gives my life its meaning be you alone

A love that calls to me out of a distant past
Among a thousand poems in the book of dreams that keep me thinking of you
It is you alone I feel
You are in my heart in a way I cannot put into words
And I find myself longing for you anew

In the past I thought of you as the sky itself
You rise up into my memory
At dusk my heart sits alone beside that thought
Is it you who is telling me
that a forbidden dream from a day long ago
will be seen once more

A young man is sitting with a love he never got over. Years have passed, but the girl is still there inside him, and this song is him quietly turning her over in his mind, half in memory and half in hope. The very title, “the moon far from the heart,” tells you where he stands: the one he loves feels as distant and out of reach as the moon, and yet she has never really left him.

That moon image runs right through the song. In Sinhala love songs the moon is the standing picture of a calm, gentle beauty, soft light rather than dazzle, and here he uses it twice over. She is the moon his heart can no longer reach, but she is also hidden right there “near his eyes,” meaning he still sees her everywhere, in everything he looks at. Then he turns it around and calls his own loneliness a moon too, a cold, faraway light that keeps him company at night. The dreams that “take hold” are the ones that keep her alive in his sleep, the only place she still comes close.

The middle of the song moves from memory into something almost like worship. He pictures a whole “book of dreams” filled with a thousand poems, and says that out of all of them, every single one is really about her. She is the only thing he truly feels. He even admits he cannot find the words for how deeply she sits in his heart, and that admission is the most honest line in the song, the feeling is bigger than his language for it. What surprises him is that the longing has not faded with time but feels new again, “aluthen pathana,” as if he is falling for her all over.

By the last verse the ache and the hope sit side by side. He remembers thinking of her as wide and limitless as the sky, and now, at dusk, that hour when the day softens and the mind drifts back, he sits alone with the thought of her. The closing turn is gentle and quietly devastating: he wonders whether it is her own voice telling him that a dream once forbidden, a love he was never allowed to have, might somehow be seen again. He does not promise himself she will come back. He just lets himself hope, and that fragile, unfinished hope is what the listener is left holding.