Unuhuma 2 Lyrics by Tehan Perera

An invitation carried in from your eyes
joined our two hearts in a dream of saṃsāra (the cycle of rebirth)
You came hiding, scattering flowers
my goddess, where have you gone and hidden?

I kiss those cheeks, like the soft golden buds of the iron-wood tree
I close my own two eyes, and you come down from the sky
With a calm heart I stand on the road ahead, watching
my golden swan, asking “is that you?”
From the world of the gods, wave your hand to me
my wedded love, you are my whole love

My breath runs hot, my tears cry out
I cannot bear it, it is so empty
The memory is you, and then comes the sorrow
I doubt I can even live this life through

Above these peaks, you are the silver sun
I know you have left in a way that you won’t return
With a calm heart I stand on the road ahead, watching
my golden swan, asking “is that you?”
From the world of the gods, wave your hand to me
my wedded love, you are my whole love

A man is grieving for the wife he has lost. She is gone, taken by death, and he sings to her as if she can still hear him, picturing her now living in the dev lova, the heaven of the gods, while he is left behind on earth. From the very first lines he goes back to the beginning of their love, the way one look from her once pulled their two hearts together, and he calls that bond a dream of saṃsāra, the long cycle of births and deaths, as if they were meant to find each other across many lifetimes. Then comes the ache of the present: that goddess of his has hidden herself away somewhere he cannot reach.

The middle of the song is where the longing turns almost unbearable. He shuts his eyes and imagines her coming down from the sky to him, and he stands out on the road, waiting, watching every figure that approaches and wondering “is that you?” He calls her his ranahansi, his golden swan. In Sinhala the swan is the image of grace and pure beauty, the bird of poets and of the goddess, so when he names her that he is saying she was the most graceful, untouchable thing in his life. He calls her his patini too, his wedded wife, a word that carries the weight of a sacred marriage vow, and he begs her, if she really is up there among the gods, to just wave her hand to him so he knows she sees him.

Then the comfort he was building for himself cracks. His breath burns, his tears won’t stop, and he admits he cannot stand how empty everything is now. Every memory of her is sweet for a second and then turns straight into pain, and he says plainly that he doubts he can even get through this life without her. He looks up and sees her as the silver sun above the mountain peaks, still shining over him, still lighting his days, and in the same breath he says the hardest thing of all: he knows the way she has gone is the kind you don’t come back from.

What makes the song hurt is that he never stops waiting even though he knows the waiting is hopeless. He keeps standing on the road, keeps asking the sky to wave back, keeps calling her his whole love. It is a husband’s grief turned into devotion, holding on to someone who is now a goddess in the heavens, loving her exactly as much as he did when she was here, because that is the only thing the loss has left him able to do.