Etha Dilisena Hiru Sandu Lyrics by HR Jothipala

Hoo… hoo…

The sun, the moon, the golden stars shining far away
they secretly told me all the news of you
and until my eyes close for good
I love you, oh I love you
I love you, oh I love you

On the tender green grass, on the dew like teardrops
in that world of love where I first saw you
On the tender green grass, on the dew like teardrops
in that world of love where I first saw you
on the day I roamed alone, searching everywhere

On the wave of the sweet moon, in the gentle breeze of joy
such fortune, a priceless dawn
On the wave of the sweet moon, in the gentle breeze of joy
such fortune, a priceless dawn
in the cool wind, out over the sand, we come together

A young man is so full of love that the whole sky seems to be in on his secret. He looks up at the sun, the moon, the far golden stars, and feels as if they themselves whispered news of the girl he loves down to him. That is where the song begins, in a happiness so big it spills out of him and onto everything around him.

The promise at the heart of it is simple and total. He says he will love her until his eyes close for the last time, which in Sinhala is the soft way of saying until the day he dies. There is no doubt or aching in this one, just a man who has found the person he wants and is sure of it all the way to the end.

Then he goes back to the moment they met, and the images turn green and dewy. The tender young grass and the drops of dew, which he calls teardrops, are not sad tears here, they are the fresh, glistening morning of a new love, the world washed clean. He had been wandering alone, looking everywhere, until he found her, and in that meeting an ordinary patch of grass became “that world of love.” The sweetness only grows from there. He talks of the moon riding on a wave and joy carried on a soft breeze, of a cool wind moving over the sand where the two of them come together. In Sinhala love song the moon stands for a calm, gentle beauty, and the cool breeze for a kind of blessed ease, so when he names all of this “fortune, a priceless dawn,” he means meeting her felt like luck he never paid for, the start of something new and unspoiled.

What the listener is left holding is pure, settled joy. No heartbreak, no waiting, just a man at the beginning of a love he is certain of, with the sky, the grass, the dew, and the sea breeze all turned warm and on his side.