Pawela Kodu Akase Lyrics by Samitha Mudunkotuwa

Floating, drifting through the open sky,
am I the one calling this a dream of a life?
Slowly, slowly it settles, and the more I think on it,
it’s true, you are as vast as my whole sky.
A dream full of poetry, close beside me,
keeping a playful longing in my heart.
You are as lovely as a bridegroom, and your love is too,
you are as lovely as a bridegroom, and your love is too.

Walking on through the memory of a sleepless dream,
your name adds a depth to my tenderness.
With a mind searching for the meaning of the love you gave,
you came closer still, from the very distance where my breath catches.

Joining this love I had never known to my heart,
it goes wandering off as it pleases, refusing to settle.
Life broke into sobs, and the loneliness faded away,
there is no room left in my heart, that is how much I gave you.

Floating, drifting through the open sky….

A young woman is so deep in love that she can hardly believe it is real. She feels like she is floating in the open sky, and she keeps asking herself whether this is actually her life or just a beautiful dream she is calling her own. That is where the song begins, with a happiness so big it almost feels weightless.

As it goes on, that disbelief slowly turns into certainty. The more she sits with the feeling, the more she knows it is true, and she reaches for the biggest thing she can think of to measure her love: the sky itself. When she says “you are as vast as my whole sky,” she means he fills everything, there is no part of her world he does not touch. She calls him “as lovely as a bridegroom,” and in a Sri Lankan wedding the groom (manamala) is the picture of someone at his finest, dressed up, glowing, the centre of the day, so the line says she sees him at his most beautiful, and his love the same way.

The middle of the song carries that lovely sleeplessness of new love. She walks back through a “sleepless dream,” a night spent awake reliving him, and just saying his name makes her affection run deeper. She keeps turning over the love he gave her, trying to understand what it means, and the closer she looks the closer he feels, near enough that her breath catches. The image of breath catching is the small physical jolt of being beside someone you love, the heart skipping for a second.

By the end she has given herself over completely. Her heart wanders off on its own, refusing to calm down. The loneliness she used to carry has melted away, and she admits there is simply no room left inside her for anything else, because all of it now belongs to him. It is a warm, almost dizzy song about that first overwhelming rush of love, the kind that makes the whole sky feel like it belongs to you.