Sumihiri Suwandathi Lyrics by Sunil Santha

These sweet-scented flowers, why do they
wither away so soon?
A brightly shining lamp, and now this thick darkness,
how am I to bear it?
My loving friend, my dear companion,
why do you lie so still today?
Rise, rise, let us go to sing
in the flowering forest of friendship

Your two eyes are closed, why so today, my friend?
what wrong did I do, alas?
Have you forgotten how the two of us
lived together under one roof?
And the way you saved me
from among my enemies?
Remembering your virtues now, again and again,
seems to split my heart with grief

The natural gift my friend showed
for singing, for playing, for dancing,
how death failed to see any of it,
it is a wonder, my flower of a friend
Every day, remembering my friend, I weep,
I weep in a lake of tears
One day we will meet again in a deathless heaven,
that too you said, that day

This is not a love song but an elegy, one of the most moving kinds of song there is: a lament for a friend who has died. The opening line carries the whole grief in an image, “these sweet-scented flowers, why do they wither so soon?” A bright lamp has gone out, thick darkness has fallen, and the singer asks how he is meant to bear it. Then comes the heartbreaking gesture of denial that grief always makes, speaking to the friend as if he were only asleep: “why do you lie so still today? Rise, rise, let us go and sing.”

The middle verse is pure, raw mourning. He gazes at the “closed eyes” and asks, almost like a child, “what wrong did I do?” He recalls the intimacy of their bond, how the two of them “lived together under one roof,” and a debt he can never repay, the time this friend “saved him from among his enemies.” Remembering such goodness now, he says, feels as though it is splitting his heart in two.

The last verse honours who the friend was, a naturally gifted singer, musician and dancer, and rages gently at the injustice of it: how could death fail to see all that brilliance and take him anyway? So every day he weeps “in a lake of tears.” And yet the song ends on the one thing that consoles him, a promise the friend himself once made: “one day we will meet again in a deathless heaven.” What the listener is left with is the timeless shape of grief, disbelief, tender memory, anger at death, and finally the fragile comfort of a reunion beyond it, sung by someone who has lost a true friend and cannot stop remembering him.