Sanda Paana Wage Dilenne Lyrics by Rookantha Gunathilaka

You shine like the light of the moon,
and it is you alone who stays set in my heart.
Like a swan on a blue lotus pond,
you move through the waters of my heart…
You shine like the light of the moon,
and it is you alone who stays set in my heart.

The girl who wandered, swaying, down the flowered lane,
came into my arms..
Where have the butterflies gone today…..
the flower grove is empty
the flowers have bloomed
Without you here, this stretch of ground feels lonely and bare
Saying that one day you would smile and come back to me again,
filled with love, the ache in my heart would ease

I will come flying into the blue sky, my love,
searching for you…
to dry up this river of tears……… my heart,
suffering, bearing the pain
Once more flowers bloom along the lane, the butterflies
fill the meadow
If only you were here beside me, the flowers, the honey again
by good fortune, the ache in my heart would ease..

A man is holding on to the memory of someone he loves and has lost, and the whole song is him talking to her as if she could still hear him. He opens by telling her she shines like the light of the moon, that she alone is fixed in his heart, and that she moves through him the way a swan glides across a still blue lotus pond. In Sinhala song the moon stands for a calm, cooling kind of beauty, light that soothes rather than dazzles, and the swan on a quiet pond is grace and purity. So before he says a word about losing her, he has already told you how gentle and steady her presence was to him.

Then the loss comes in through the world around him. He remembers her as the girl who wandered down a flower-lined lane, swaying as she walked, who once came into his arms. Now he looks at that same place and asks where the butterflies have gone. The grove is empty, the flowers have bloomed but there is no one to see them with. In these lyrics the blooming flowers and the butterflies are the old happiness, the lane full of life when she was there. Their absence is how he shows you she is gone. The ground itself feels lonely and bare without her, and he keeps comforting himself with a promise he is not sure of, that one day she will smile and come back, and the pain in his heart will finally settle.

The last part turns into pure longing. He says he would fly up into the blue sky to search for her, and that all he wants is to dry up the river of tears he has become. The river of tears is grief that does not stop flowing, and the wish to fly off looking for her tells you how far gone she is, that he cannot simply walk to where she waits. He pictures the lane blooming again, the butterflies filling the meadow, the flowers and the honey returning, but every one of those images depends on one condition, if only she were beside him. That is where the song leaves you, with a man who can imagine the whole world coming back to life, but only if the one person he lost were there to share it.