Shwethawiye Lyrics by Udaya Sri Wickramasinghe

At the very edge of my romantic dreams
I searched for the comfort of you, everywhere, anywhere
as if by old habit through the lives of samsara
love binds us, time after time

Your face appears to me always
still now, through the long night, there is no sleep
a blurred mist veils the sky of my mind
the love I have hidden away in my breast
is you, always you
soothing these feelings, how am I to speak them?

Shwethavi, your love
is like an intoxication…
it rises in my heart a hundredfold
and it creates a light…

With the tips of your delicate fingers
you touched my heart, softly
holding the unspoken stories in your eyes
how can you go on so, with that sweet playfulness?

Through the cool, soft blue expanse
I will carry you above these mountain peaks
winding my arms around your waist
I will fill the night with stars and paint a picture
I will adorn you with your love
if only you come, taking hold of my hands

Shwethavi, your love
is like an intoxication…
it rises in my heart a hundredfold
and it creates a light…

O moon-maiden, though you dart hiding, place to place, across the sphere of my heart
though you think to vanish, to slip away, to be pulled far off from me now
in every place I see in my mind, seen or unseen, in every field
there is no way at all for you to hide from me now
drunk on love, I will find you
if this whole universe were my own heart, I would search it, comb every star of every world-system
gathering handfuls of them, counting countless eons, I will chase after you and come
do not let my mind, running here and there, lose its way
at least now, stop and look into my eyes and stay
without hiding it in the depths of your heart, show your love, look at me
I will teach you how to savour life

Are you still in the dream?
will you not come to me now
to comfort me, filling my heart,
drawing near forever…

Shwethavi, your love
is like an intoxication…
it rises in my heart a hundredfold
and it creates a light…

This is a big, sweeping love song, and its central idea is that this love reaches across lifetimes. He calls his beloved “Shwethavi,” the fair or radiant one, and says he has searched for the comfort of her everywhere, “as if by old habit through the lives of samsara,” the Buddhist cycle of rebirth. Their love, he feels, “binds us time after time,” not just in this life but through countless past ones. That turns an ordinary longing into something vast and fated.

The nearer verses bring it back to the ache of the present. Her face is always before him, sleep will not come through the long nights, and a “blurred mist veils the sky of his mind.” He remembers the softest thing, the tips of her delicate fingers touching his heart, and the unspoken stories held in her eyes. Twice the chorus names what her love does to him: it is “like an intoxication,” unmada, rising in his heart a hundredfold and creating a light. Then he offers her a soaring, romantic fantasy, to carry her above the mountains through the cool blue sky, wind his arms around her, and “fill the night with stars.”

The long spoken-style passage near the end is the heart of the song and its most beautiful conceit. However she darts and hides “across the sphere of my heart,” she cannot escape him, because his heart is the whole universe: “if this whole universe were my own heart, I would search it, comb every star of every world-system, and counting countless eons, chase after you.” It is devotion imagined on a cosmic scale. Yet it ends humbly and tenderly, pleading with her to simply stop, look into his eyes, stop hiding her love, and stay, “I will teach you how to savour life.” What the listener is left with is love as something eternal and enormous, a man willing to search across eons and galaxies, asking only that the one he loves finally turn and stay near.