Ira Basa Giya Thana Na Lyrics by Rookantha Gunathilaka

There’s no place the moon has set,
no place the sun has gone down,
no place the waves have died away,
in the great ocean.

There’s no day I have smiled,
no day I have found peace,
no day I have been soothed,
in my world.

Will we meet tomorrow?
Will we find peace tomorrow?
Will we be comforted tomorrow,
my beloved?
Will we meet today?
Will we find peace today?
Will we be comforted today,
in this ocean of love?

As well as I know you,
you don’t even know me.
Even if you never look my way, I hold no anger.
From the day I first saw you,
from the moment you appeared,
the feelings deep in my heart
awoke.

A young man is in love with someone who barely knows he exists, and the whole song is the quiet ache of that one-sided longing. He never accuses her or asks for anything back. He just lays out how much she has changed his inner world, even though she has no idea.

He opens with the sea. In the great ocean, he says, there is no place where the moon has set, no place where the sun has gone down, no place where the waves have ever died away. The sun, the moon and the waves are the things that always come and go, that always find their rest. But out on that vast water there is no shore for them to settle on, so they keep moving without end. That is how he describes his own heart. Just as those waves never get to lie still, he has not had a single day of smiling, a single day of peace, a single day of being soothed. The endless restless sea is his own restlessness over her.

Then the longing turns into a string of soft questions. Will we meet tomorrow, will we find peace, will we be comforted, my dear one? Will we meet today? He is not demanding answers, he is hoping out loud, the way you do when you want something so much you can only phrase it as a question. He calls the whole thing a “pem sayura,” an ocean of love, tying his feelings back to that same boundless sea from the start. His love is as wide and as without-shore as the water he sang about.

The last verse is the most tender and the saddest part. He knows her well, but she does not even recognize him. And still he says he holds no anger, even if she never once looks his way. From the very day he first saw her, feelings stirred awake in the deepest part of his heart, and they have not let him rest since. What stays with you at the end is the gentleness of it. He asks for nothing, blames no one, and simply carries a love that woke in him the moment he saw her and has kept him awake ever since.