Api Hamuwunu Thena

This is the place where we met,
we ourselves are the ones who spoke words of love,
that is the place we will never come back to

Lovers, in happy laughter,
I hear them, again and again, from afar,
murmuring their feelings in secret,
will we meet again, here, in this place?

This is the place where we met

We too were the ones who laughed together,
and again and again wept, and said goodbye,
heartbreak, then warmth,
now it all passes away, in a single sigh

This is the place where we met

A quietly grieving song rooted in a single spot, the place where we met. Here, the singer says, we ourselves spoke words of love; and yet, painfully, this is also the place we will never come back to. The same ground holds both the beginning of the love and the certainty that it is over.

The middle fills the place with other people’s happiness. He hears lovers, in happy laughter, from afar, murmuring their feelings in secret, and it makes him ask the ache of the whole song: will we meet again, here, in this place? Their joy only sharpens his own longing.

The close remembers their own version of that laughter, and its end. We too were the ones who laughed together, but again and again wept, and said goodbye; heartbreak followed by warmth, and now it all passes away, in a single sigh. Sung by Shirly Waijayantha, it is a tender, wistful song about returning in memory to the place a love began, and grieving that it is the one place it can never return to.