Nilwan Muhude Theere Lyrics by Desmond De Silva

By the blue sea shore,
on the field where rock-flowers bloomed,
I am alone on the deck of the ship,
and she lies on her bed.

The day I crossed over to her,
she came back to me again.
That moment feels as fresh as today.

Held close against me,
drinking the tears from her eyes,
I hear the sound of her quiet sighs.

By the blue sea shore,
on the field where rock-flowers bloomed,
I am alone on the deck of the ship.

In the sweet hour of night,
in the watch when I broke free,
her two lips were on my two cheeks.

That fragrance she left still spreads
across my face even now.
No, I will not wipe it, no, not from my face.

By the blue sea shore,
on the field where rock-flowers bloomed,
I am alone on the deck of the ship,
and she lies on her bed.

A sailor stands alone on the deck of his ship, out on the open sea, and his mind is back home with the woman he loves. That gap, him on the water, her asleep in her bed, is the ache the whole song turns on. He has the entire ocean around him and the one person he wants is on the far shore, and so he keeps her close the only way he can, by remembering.

The memory he holds is a single night before he sailed. He thinks of the time he crossed over to her, of holding her against him while she cried, of hearing her sigh softly in the dark. The tenderest moment is when her lips touched both his cheeks, a small, quiet kiss given in the last hours of night. It is not a grand goodbye, just two people holding on before the sea takes him away.

The fragrance is the heart of the song. Her scent, the smell of her skin and her nearness, still lingers on his face days into the voyage, and he refuses to wash it off. As long as it stays, she stays. Wiping his face would mean letting her go, and he is not ready to. It is a sailor’s version of carrying a photograph, except all he has is what he can feel and smell, so he guards it. The “field where rock-flowers bloomed” sets the shore he left as a place of beauty and life, the world of land and home, while he drifts on the empty blue.

What lingers by the end is the loneliness of a man whose work keeps pulling him out to sea, holding onto a borrowed scent and one remembered night to bridge the distance until he can come home to her again.