Sanda Dothata Evi

The moon will come down into cupped hands,
the fire of the sun will be quenched,
the stars will not once blink their eyes,
if only there is love…

Flowers will bloom into blossom,
their pollen will grow heavy with honey,
a soft fragrance will spread all around,
if only there is love..

This is a short, radiant hymn about the power of love to do the impossible, and it makes its point through a series of small marvels. In the first verse, love bends the very heavens: “the moon will come down into cupped hands,” the unreachable made suddenly close; “the fire of the sun will be quenched,” the fiercest heat cooled; “the stars will not once blink their eyes,” the restless sky held still in wonder. Each is something that could never happen on its own, and each is offered with the same quiet condition, “if only there is love.”

The second verse brings the same magic down to earth and makes it tender rather than cosmic. “Flowers will bloom into blossom, their pollen will grow heavy with honey, a soft fragrance will spread all around.” Love is shown as the thing that makes life open up, sweeten and give off its scent, a garden coming into its own.

The refrain, “if only there is love,” is the whole heart of the song, and its beauty is in what it leaves unsaid. It does not argue or explain; it simply promises that where love is present, the impossible becomes possible and the barren becomes fragrant and sweet. On a hymn-collection this points naturally to the greatest love of all, the love of God, which draws heaven near and makes dead things bloom. What the listener is left with is a small, glowing piece of poetry, and a quiet conviction that nothing, not the moon, not the sun, not a withered life, is beyond changing where real love is at work.