Heena Podi

Bundling dream-parcels on her belly, she enters the rose-garden,
plucking a rosebud, a mother is grown once more,
at the boundary she stays, seen and unseen,
a father’s birth-pangs are never set down on paper

The sun that rose at dawn sinks into the evening sea,
the birds too, at day’s end, rest in the comfort of a nest,
but a father, blowing on the fire into sweat through the night,
stays sleepless at a worksite, building a dowry

Bound to the hand of a daughter walking to the poruwa on her wedding day,
the hand that guarded the flower has itself become the thorn on the stalk,
the way the whole heart breaks off into another’s hand,
at the corner of a father’s eye, the tears win no merit

The endless belly of the sky holds lonely stars,
and though burnt out, the old ones still spread their light today,
even forgotten, missed because of work,
somewhere on a patch of bare ground, a father lies asleep

A moving, understated tribute to fathers, and to the quiet, unseen sacrifices of fatherhood. It opens with a striking parallel: a mother, bundling “dream-parcels” and entering the rose-garden, is “grown again” through her child, while a father’s own birth-pangs, his labour and pain, are never recorded on paper, felt by no one and written down nowhere.

The middle sets the father against the natural order and finds him alone in his devotion. The sun sets, the birds return to their nests to rest, but the father works on, blowing the fire into sweat through the night, sleepless at a worksite, “building a dowry” for his child’s future. His love is measured in exhaustion no one sees.

The last verses reach the wedding and beyond. Giving away the daughter’s hand at the poruwa, the very hand that once guarded her like a flower becomes “the thorn on the stalk,” left behind as she is taken into another’s; his whole heart breaks off into someone else’s hand, and yet the tears at the corner of a father’s eye “win no merit,” go unhonoured. Like burnt-out stars that still shed light, the father keeps giving even when forgotten, until, somewhere on a bare patch of ground, he simply lies down to sleep. Sung by Uthsari Ekanayaka, composed by Tharindu Damsara to words by Dilhan Fonseka, it is a tender song for every father whose love is spent in silence and rarely repaid in kind.