Yowun Sihina Loke Lyrics by Mariazelle Goonetilleke

In this world of youthful dreams,
why are you grieving in sorrow?
Sing a song and laugh along with me,
come close and stay bound to me, you and I //
In this world of youthful dreams,
looking into this world of youthful dreams

There’s no sorrow, no aching, no heartbreak in this love,
in my world, my whole life is a song.
Come and join me in a world like that,
hold out your cupped hands to listen.

In this world of youthful dreams,
why are you grieving in sorrow?
Sing a song and laugh along with me,
come close and stay bound to me, you and I
In this world of youthful dreams,
looking into this world of youthful dreams

Let’s rise into the clouds in the sky and float,
let’s bathe in the waves of the sea.
Night or day, in life’s season of flowers,
come walk with me, hand in hand.

In this world of youthful dreams,
why are you grieving in sorrow?
Sing a song and laugh along with me,
come close and stay bound to me, you and I //
In this world of youthful dreams,
looking into this world of youthful dreams

A young man is holding his hand out to the girl he loves and asking her, gently, why she looks so sad. He sees her carrying some quiet sorrow, and his whole answer to it is an invitation: come into my world, the one I’m calling “the world of youthful dreams,” and leave the grief behind. That phrase, yowun seena loke, sets the whole mood. It’s the bright, hopeful inner world of young people in love, where everything still feels possible and nothing has gone wrong yet.

The song moves through that invitation. He promises her that in this world there’s no sorrow and no heartbreak, that for him life itself is just a song, and he wants her to come and live inside it with him. When he asks her to “hold out your cupped hands to listen,” he’s using a lovely, old image. In Sinhala, cupping your hands together, the savan dotha, is how you receive something precious and offered, the way you’d hold out your palms to catch water or a gift. He’s asking her to open herself up and take in what he’s singing, to receive his love the way you receive something you’ve been waiting for.

The last verse is where the feeling lifts right off the ground. He pictures the two of them rising into the clouds and floating, bathing together in the waves of the sea, walking hand in hand through “life’s season of flowers.” None of this is meant literally. The clouds and the sea are how he paints a love so free and so light that it carries you up out of ordinary cares, and mal viye, the flowering season, is youth itself, the time of life when everything is blossoming. So the whole song is one warm, coaxing hand reaching toward someone who is down, asking her to stop grieving, take his hand, and step into a happier world the two of them can build together. It leaves you with the simple, hopeful warmth of early love, the belief that being close to one person can make the sadness lift.