Sanda Ebennepa

Moon, don’t peep out and cover the gaps between the stars,
don’t make the stars in these dark eyes weep,
up above the seven hundred lotus flowers..//
A soft fragrance drifts, bringing the comfort of old memories..//

Because you are near, my heart fills with merit,
the jasmine flowers have bloomed..//
Spreading their light, covering the lake of my heart,
the water lilies and the white lotus have bloomed too…//

Moon, don’t peep out…//

Because you are far, across the whole sky
a sudden rain came down..//
The heart, bearing its sorrow, smothered in sighs,
even a moon of tears began to weep..//

Moon, don’t peep out..//

A young man, lit up by love, is talking to the moon, and what he asks of it tells you everything about the state he is in. He begs the moon not to come out, not to peep through the gaps between the stars. On any ordinary night that would sound strange, the moon is the loveliest thing in the sky. But when you are in love, the face you long for becomes your moon, and any other light feels like a rival, a reminder, or just too much to bear. So he wants the night kept soft and dim, with only the memory of the one he loves filling it.

The song moves between two states, and the flower imagery is the key to both. When his love is near, his heart fills with pin (merit, a sense of blessedness), and the jasmine, the kumudu (water lily) and the white kondha lotus all burst into bloom inside him. In Sinhala song, flowers opening in the heart is the standard image for joy coming alive, the inner world blossoming the way a pond does at the right hour. His chest becomes a lake, and her nearness makes every flower in it open.

Then the song turns. When she is far, the same sky that held the gentle moon now pours sudden rain, and his heart, heavy with sorrow and choked with sighs, weeps until even his tears seem to form a moon of their own. That closing image is the ache of the whole song, the very moon he asked to stay hidden returns, this time made of his own crying. Joy and grief share the same pictures here, the moon, the water, the blooming and the weeping, and the song lives in the thin line between them: when she is close, the heart is a garden in flower, and when she is gone, the same heart is a rained-out sky. Anyone who has loved someone they cannot always keep near will know exactly the feeling he is naming.