Me Andura

This darkness flows
from that sea we once embraced with our eyes,
the journey of the past asks after me,
seeing me alone, with unfamiliar cloud-eyes,
still the details are told
by a footprint the waves came and erased,
and yet this is what I feel,
that everything is still that way, in that same way

An unspent, unfinished
solitary hour
is the equal of many years,
to fill up a whole aeon,
a little memory is enough,
the time simply never runs out

When I walk alone,
where is the other pair of feet?,
asks the edge of the shore,
bearing a smile heavy with weeping,
I murmur to myself,
an ending is ended only by an ending

A hushed, philosophical song about solitude by the sea, where a lost love still colours everything. This darkness flows, the singer says, from that sea we once embraced with our eyes, the very place they shared is now the source of his dark. The past asks after him, seeing him alone; a footprint the waves erased still somehow tells the story; and, most painfully, everything is still that way, nothing inside him has moved on.

The middle bends time. An unspent, unfinished solitary hour is the equal of many years, loneliness makes a single hour endless. And to fill a whole aeon, he notes, a little memory is enough, and the time simply never runs out. Grief has no economy; one small memory can stretch to fill forever.

The close is a quiet exchange with the shore itself. When I walk alone, where is the other pair of feet?, the beach seems to ask, noticing the missing companion. And he answers, bearing a smile heavy with weeping, with the line that holds the whole song: an ending is ended only by an ending. There is no way out of the loss except through it. Sung by Sandeepa Devshan to words by Ruhunuketha Dhammadewa Thero, composed by Tharindu Damsara, it is a still, meditative song about grieving a love beside the sea, where time stops and only an ending can end an ending.