Ape Adare Kathawa

The stars of your eyes told the way through the dreaming sky
across samsara, hand in hand, I came the long road, searching
I too sought the colour of love and made my reasons
kindling a joyful heart, I tremble, even my sighs shake
O prince, the dream that fills my longing,
your love is like meditation to the heart
you brought the spring, my darling
love that speaks of the infinite
it will bloom like a flower, this life
beside you, my young love, I rest
this is the story of our love

A gentle tenderness is felt, and stays without leaving
the once-hard heart is wrapped in love
every time I am flustered, it pierces my heart
does that breast of yours still want more love?
on the day our hands are joined, adorned, garlands worn,
open your unaccustomed eyes and look at me, saying “love”
O prince, the dream that fills my longing,
your love is like meditation to the heart
you brought the spring, my darling
love that speaks of the infinite
it will bloom like a flower, this life
beside you, my young love, I rest
this is the story of our love

This is a duet, a couple telling “the story of our love” back and forth, and its warmth comes from how completely each has become the other’s world. The woman describes finding her way “through the dreaming sky” by “the stars of your eyes,” and travelling “the long road across samsara, hand in hand,” the Sinhala way of saying their love feels older than this single lifetime. She admits she trembles, “even my sighs shake,” with the sheer happiness of it.

The most beautiful line is her image for his love: “your love is like meditation to the heart.” In a Buddhist culture, bhaavanaava, meditation, is what brings the mind calm, focus and peace, so to say a lover’s affection feels like meditation is to say it settles and steadies the whole self. He is her “prince,” the dream that fills her longing, the one who “brought the spring,” the season of love, and she trusts that their life will “bloom like a flower.”

The second verse turns to the tender changes love works on a person. A gentle feeling arrives and simply will not leave; a heart once “hard” is now “wrapped in love”; and she looks ahead to their wedding day, “the day our hands are joined, garlands worn,” asking him to open his shy, “unaccustomed eyes” and say the word: love. What the listener is left with is the soft, hopeful glow of two people at the beginning of a life together, each certain the other is the whole story.