Maha Merak Tharam Lyrics

Carry a love as great as a mighty mountain, and come drawing near from miles away
Pick wild flowers, and by the flower fence, give a kiss to their fragrance
Come tomorrow morning to watch the procession of flowers
With our eyes close together, take hand in hand and kiss this loving face
Teach me what love is, and bind our arms into a wall around us
Sit here in our circle, and share out this loving heart

(A precious love, blessed and full of merit, a love of the finest kind
In this lovely place, that is how the flowers bloom)..//
Become a chattering breeze
Bloom with the soft smile of a flower
Come down this lane and speak a tender verse of love
Teach me what love is

(A loving heart is beautiful, sorrow is forbidden here
On the shore of this swan lake, that is how much tenderness there is)..//
Come into this cluster of love flowers
Kiss that fair face
Come down this lane and share sorrow and joy alike
Teach me what love is

As great as a mighty mountain….
Share out this loving heart..//

A young man is calling out to the girl he loves, asking her to come to him no matter how far she has to travel. He tells her to bring with her a love as big as a mountain, and to come to a place that he has made beautiful for her, where wild flowers bloom and the air is sweet. That is the whole feeling of this song: an open, hopeful invitation into love, with no shadow over it.

The opening line carries the heart of it. He measures his love against “maha merak,” a great mountain, the way Sinhala love songs reach for something huge and unmovable to say how deep the feeling runs. He wants her to come from miles away carrying that same weight of love, so the two of them can meet in the middle. The images he uses are all of flowers and gentleness. He talks about a flower fence, a procession of flowers, and a “cluster of love flowers,” painting the place where they will meet as a small garden world made only of tenderness. When he asks her to “kiss the fragrance” of the flowers, he is asking for a love that is soft and unhurried, the kind you give to something delicate.

The little refrain about the “swan lake” is the prettiest touch. In Sinhala poetry the swan is a sign of grace, purity, and a calm, settled kind of love, so when he says tenderness waits on the shore of this swan lake, he is promising her a peaceful place where sorrow is not allowed in. Notice how often he repeats “aadare kiyalaa denna,” teach me what love is. He is not pretending to be wise about love; he is asking her to show it to him, to teach it to him hand in hand, which is a humble and very young way to ask.

What you are left with is something warm and unguarded. He wants to bind their arms together like a wall around the two of them, to sit in their own little circle, and to share one heart between them, taking both the sorrow and the joy in equal measure. There is no heartbreak here and no longing for someone gone. It is the bright, hopeful side of love, a boy clearing a path of flowers and simply asking the girl he adores to walk down it toward him.