Kaulu Piyanpath Lyrics by Kasun Kalhara

Close the window shutters here on the sandalwood terrace
You are far from my sight, on this lonely terrace of longing… //

The flowers bloomed in a faraway lake, never for us
Boats and rafts come, take a look, and turn away, and the lake runs deep
The bees breathe in the fragrance of the flowers and drift off, somehow
And the road to the sandalwood terrace is so very far…

The milk-white smiling moon stayed up there in the sky
The winking, playful stars were nowhere for the sky to see
In the mansion that carries my heart away, on the sandalwood terrace
Please close the window shutters, and let us meet through our eyes…

A young man is alone at night, aching for someone who isn’t there. He keeps coming back to one place in his mind, the “sandalwood terrace,” a moonlit, pale and quiet spot that becomes the whole stage for his longing. He asks for the window shutters to be closed, the way you shut out the world when the person you want is gone and you would rather sit with the memory than face the empty night.

The middle of the song is built on images of things that are near but out of reach. Flowers bloom in a distant lake, but he says plainly they were never meant for him. Boats and rafts pass by, glance at the lake, and move on, while the water stays deep and unknowable, just like the feeling he can’t get to the bottom of. Even the bees only take the fragrance of the flowers and leave. In Sinhala love poetry the bee drawing nectar from a flower is a familiar picture of a lover and a beloved, so when the bees just drink the scent and fly away, he is quietly saying that closeness slips past him too, and the path to the one he wants stays impossibly long.

Then he looks up. The moon hangs in the sky, milk-white and smiling, while the little stars seem to vanish, as if even the bright, teasing things have hidden themselves away. The moon here is the old standing image of a calm, gentle face, a serene beauty that watches over the night, and it doubles for the person he is missing, present in the sky the way she is present in his mind but nowhere he can touch.

By the end the terrace has turned into a mansion that carries his heart off somewhere far, and all he asks for is the smallest meeting, to close the shutters and meet “through the eyes,” in a look, in memory, in the imagination. That is the quiet weight of the song. He knows the real distance won’t close, so he settles for the only nearness left to him, the kind you hold behind closed shutters with the moon for company.