Maha Wessak Bimata Hala Lyrics by Sunil Edirisinghe

Like a great rain poured down upon the earth,
like an open, boundless sky,
don’t sit there so still and silent.
I can’t bear this silence of yours.
Please, in a little while, smile and talk to me.
I can’t bear this silence of yours.

Bitter sighs fill the whole house,
coming in through the shutters and lattice doors.
On a sleepless dark-of-the-moon night,
the empty bed weaves cruel mockery.

You taught me to thread poison thorns into your heart,
you, who taught me
to recite a poem of blessing.
In what land were faultless people ever born?

A man sits across from someone he loves who has gone completely quiet on him, and the silence is unbearable. That is the whole ache of this song. He isn’t angry, he is pleading. All he wants is for the other person to soften, to look up, to say something, even just a little while from now. The repeated line, “I can’t bear this silence of yours,” is the heart of it, a person who would rather have a hard word than no word at all.

The images he reaches for in the opening are about wanting that person to open up. A great rain falling on the earth and a wide, boundless sky are both things that pour out freely, with nothing held back, and that is exactly what he longs for from a beloved who has shut down into stillness. Against that openness, the silence in the house feels heavier. He describes bitter sighs filling the family home, drifting in through the wooden shutters and lattice doors, as if the whole house has caught the sadness. Then comes the loneliest picture in the song: a sleepless night with no moon, and an empty bed that seems to mock him, the place where two people should be lying side by side now turned into a quiet joke at his expense.

The last verse is where the hurt and the tenderness meet. He says this person taught him to press poison thorns into their own heart, the same person who once taught him to recite a poem of blessing, a verse of goodwill and kindness. So the one who gave him gentleness is also the one causing the pain now, and he knows it. He doesn’t curse them for it. Instead he ends on a soft, forgiving question: in what country were faultless people ever born? Nobody is without flaw, he is saying, so how can he hold these wounds against someone he loves. The song closes not in bitterness but in a worn, gentle acceptance, a man choosing to forgive the very silence that is breaking him.