Ron Soya Lyrics by Latha Walpola

Like a butterfly flying in search of nectar,
I wander gladly through the forest groves.
Drifting… drifting… through the blue… I go.

The trees and branches, buds breaking open,
flower after flower waving softly like fans,
lovely as the small birds and the parrots,
and I hear them chirping away in delight.

Glistening dewdrops strung like pearls,
the blue garments of the sky gathered up,
fluttering across the open sky,
as if a milk-white canopy were hung overhead.

This is a song of pure delight in nature, the voice of someone roaming the open countryside as freely and lightly as a butterfly. There is no heartbreak or longing here, just the simple joy of moving through a forest in full bloom and drinking it all in. The singer compares herself to a butterfly going from flower to flower in search of nectar, and that image sets the whole mood: weightless, unhurried, happy to wander wherever the beauty leads.

The middle of the song fills in what she sees and hears around her. The trees are pushing out fresh buds, and flower after flower sways in the breeze. In Sinhala the flowers are pictured waving like the soft ceremonial fans you see in temple processions, a gentle, almost reverent motion rather than a wild one. The little birds and parrots add their own charm, and their chirping (“kichi bichi”) is the contented background music of the scene, the sound of a forest that is alive and at ease.

The last verse lifts the eye upward. Morning dewdrops catch the light and look like pearls threaded on a string, a favourite image in Sinhala verse for something small made precious. Then the song turns the sky itself into cloth, the “blue garments” gathered overhead, with a milk-white covering (“kirisudu wiyana”) spread above like a canopy. A wiyana is the decorated cloth canopy strung over a wedding or a place of honour, so calling the pale clouds a milk-white canopy quietly says the whole sky is dressed up, as if nature has laid out its finest for her to walk beneath.

What the listener is left with is a feeling of lightness and contentment. The song does not ask for anything or mourn anything. It simply invites you to float along, butterfly-like, through a world that feels fresh, blooming and gently celebratory, and to notice how much beauty there is in an ordinary morning in the forest.