Sowin Piri Mage Hadawatha Lyrics by Sanath Nandasiri

Rising up and pouring out from my sorrow-filled heart,
feelings gather and clot, bringing pain to my mind.
The bed where I once lay in comfort
now feels as if it is spread with sharp poison thorns, and my body aches.

My body is full of pain, my mind heavy with grief,
my eyes are not blind, yet they find no ease.
My ears are not deaf, nothing is missing from them,
and still no good, no sweetness has reached them till now.
Till now I have heard none.
Till now I have heard none.

Rising up and pouring out from my sorrow-filled heart,
feelings gather and clot, bringing pain to my mind.

My two hands and feet are not crippled, yet through them
I have gained no treasure, no joy, not till now.
I have only heard the word “sweetness” spoken, but the meaning
locked away inside it, I have not heard till now.
Till now I have heard none.
Till now I have heard none.

From my sorrow-filled heart …

This is the lament of someone worn down by long suffering, a person who has known so little comfort in life that even the word for “sweetness” or “happiness” sounds foreign to him. He is not telling a love story. He is opening his chest and letting the reader see how heavy a heart can get when grief has been its only companion for a long time.

He begins with that heart, so full of sorrow that the feelings rise up and spill out on their own. They thicken and clot inside him, and every one of them lands as pain in his mind. Then he reaches for an image anyone can feel: the bed where he once lay in peace now feels as if it has been strewn with sharp, poisoned thorns. In Sinhala the soft “yahana”, the resting place, stands for ease and shelter, so turning it into a bed of poison thorns says that even the one place a tired body should find rest has become a place of pain. There is nowhere left to lie down and be still.

What makes the lament so striking is how he counts off his own body. His eyes are not blind, yet they have seen no comfort. His ears are not deaf, nothing is wrong with them, and still no good thing, no sweet thing, has ever reached them. His hands and feet work, they are not crippled, yet they have never brought him any treasure or any joy. Line by line he says: I am whole, every sense intact, and somehow none of it has ever given me one moment of the sweetness other people seem to know. That repeated “methek neha asi”, “till now I have heard none”, falls like a quiet bell at the end of each verse, and the repetition is the point. It is the sound of waiting for something good that simply never comes.

The closing turn is the saddest of all. He says he has heard the word “sweetness” spoken, but the meaning locked away inside it he has never reached. He knows happiness only as a word other people use, not as something he has ever held. That is the ache the song leaves you with: not a single loud tragedy, but a whole life lived just outside the door of joy, hearing it named and never once being let in.