Sihina Genena Lyrics by Clarence Wijewardena

Who are you, the one who brings me dreams?
Is there no new dream for me?
I keep seeing the same old dream,
and the joy in my heart has faded away.

When I come to bed worn out,
my eyes close before I even know it.
A coolness settles over me in that moment,
and the same familiar dream appears in my mind.

There is a face in it that I can never see clearly,
and my heart longs to see it in the dream.
To let me see that face in my dream,
just grant me leave this once.

Who are you, the one who brings me dreams?

A man lies down at the end of a long, tired day and finds himself talking to whoever it is that sends him his dreams. Night after night the same dream comes to him, and he is half pleading, half complaining: is there really no new dream you can bring me? The same picture keeps returning, and somewhere along the way the happiness it once gave him has worn thin.

The tender heart of the song is that one blurred face. Every night, as soon as his eyes close and a cool calm comes over him, the familiar dream rises again, and in it stands a figure he can never quite make out. He aches to see it clearly, and so he begs, almost like asking permission of some unseen keeper of dreams, to be allowed just once to look on that face properly. There is real longing in that small request. You feel he already knows, or hopes, who it is, and that seeing the face plainly would mean everything to him.

The dream here works the way it often does in Sinhala song, as the only place a person can meet what they have lost or cannot reach in waking life. The coolness that washes over him as he drifts off is the body letting go of a hard day, but it is also the gentle hush in which the heart finally speaks. Asking who brings the dream, and asking leave to see the face, are really the same quiet wish dressed two ways: a man reaching, through sleep, for someone his days no longer hold. What lingers after the last line repeats is that ache of being so close to a beloved face every night and never being allowed to see it whole.