Sandawatha Ahasin Watila Lyrics by M.G. Dhanushka

Has the moon fallen from the sky
and come to rest here in my yard?
Without a word you stole my heart
and made up your mind to leave, girl.

In my lonely hours, won’t you stay
close beside me, don’t push me away.
If you rest your head on my chest and ask for my heart,
I’d give it to you for nothing, my love.

In this sad life of mine,
loneliness was my only company.
In that unfamiliar gaze of yours
there was a tender, caring closeness.

In the secret of your long blue eyes
my mind takes off and flies away unseen.
I want my dreams to come true,
when will you be mine?

A young man has fallen for a girl, and he opens by asking whether the moon itself has dropped out of the sky and landed in his yard. In Sinhala song the moon is the standing image for a calm, lovely face, beauty that soothes rather than dazzles, so when he wonders if the moon has come down to his own home, he is saying she is that beautiful, and that her being near him feels too good to be real. But almost in the same breath comes the ache: without saying a word she has taken his heart and seems ready to walk away.

From there the song is one long plea. In his lonely hours he wants her to stay close, not to leave him. He tells her that if she would only lean her head on his chest and ask, he would hand over his heart for nothing, no price, no conditions. That is the whole feeling of the song, a quiet, open-handed love that asks for almost nothing in return except that she stay.

The third verse is where the loneliness underneath all this shows itself. He says his life has been a sad one, that for a long time loneliness was the only thing keeping him company. Then her gaze came, a look he wasn’t used to, and in it he felt a tenderness, a warmth, that he hadn’t known before. She is the first thing in a long while to make the emptiness feel different.

He closes on her eyes. He calls them long and blue, and says that in their secret his mind lifts up and flies off somewhere no one can see, the way you get lost in someone and forget where you are. All he is left holding is his own dream, and the one question he keeps asking: when will you finally be mine? The song never gets its answer, and that unanswered longing is exactly what makes it land.