Sithe Susum Niwana Gayana Lyrics by Clarence Wijewardena

A song that soothes the sighs of the heart,
floating in an instant to find your ears.
Dancing its dance in the dead of night,
it made me forget the pain of the world of memory.

A fresh new song comes to the heart,
we sing it to savor its sweetness.
It becomes a heaven in a world of wonder,
the end of sorrow in the world of memory.

A song that soothes the sighs of the heart…

Youth does not stay with us forever,
it flies away in ways we never expected.
Rising like a bright lamp,
it grows dark and flickers out.

A song that soothes the sighs of the heart…

This is a song about song itself, about what music does for the heart. There is no lover and no story here, just a quiet meditation on why we sing. The opening lines call a song the thing that soothes the sighs of the heart, the sound that drifts to your ears in an instant and pulls you out of yourself. In Sinhala the “world of memory” (මතක ලෝකේ) is the place where our old hurts live, the things we carry and turn over in our minds. The singer says a song dancing in the middle of the night can make all of that fall quiet, even if only for the length of the music.

The middle verse leans into the simple joy of it. A fresh new song arrives in the heart, and we sing it just to taste its sweetness, nothing more. For those minutes the song becomes a heaven in a world of wonder, a small bright place where sorrow ends. This is the gentle heart of the lyric, the idea that music is a refuge you can step into whenever the weight of memory gets heavy.

Then the last verse turns reflective and a little sad. Youth does not stay with us, it slips away when we least expect it. The lyricist reaches for an old and lovely image to say so, the oil lamp. Youth rises like a bright lamp at dusk, glowing for a while, and then the flame dims and goes out. In Sri Lankan life the lamp is everywhere, lit at the temple, at the doorstep, at every blessing, and watching one burn down to nothing is something everyone has seen. Setting that image of fading life right beside the comfort of song is the song’s quiet wisdom. Our years burn out like a lamp, but a melody can light the dark of the heart while it lasts, and that is reason enough to keep singing.