Ehema Baluwama

When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
I can’t sleep at night…
casting glances like these across saṃsāra (the cycle of births)…
searching, drawing near…
ah…
my heartbeat, too, has started to race…

When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
I can’t sleep at night…

the secret read in eyes that are closing…
awake, picking it out…
ah…
the love the two eyes showed in the silent watch of night…
turning tender, welling over…
these two hands must come close and join…
these dreams must truly come true…
you must stay right beside me through all saṃsāra…
bound to my heart…

When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
I can’t sleep at night…

as time goes by, the love is felt…
dawning all across the heart…
ah…
even your face spills along the edge of the dewy clouds…
moonlit stories pouring down…
these two hands must come close and join…
these dreams must truly come true…
you must stay right beside me through all saṃsāra…
bound to my heart…

When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
When you look at me like that…
I can’t sleep at night…

It’s the middle of the night and a young man still can’t sleep, all because of one look the girl he has fallen for gave him. He keeps coming back to the same line, like a heartbeat he can’t slow down. When she looks at him like that, he can’t sleep at all.

Then comes a word that carries real weight for us: saṃsāra. In Buddhist belief it’s the long cycle of being born again and again, life after life. So when he asks her to stay close to him through all of saṃsāra, he is making the biggest promise a person can make here, for this life and every life after it. That one word turns a young love into something deep and serious, and you can tell how much he means it.

As the song goes on, it fills with night and moonlight. Even her tired, half closed eyes seem to be saying something to him, and the love moves between them in the stillest hours. By the end her face feels like it’s spreading across the dew filled clouds, and the moonlight pours down like someone telling a soft story. In our songs the moon almost always means a gentle, calming kind of beauty, the light that settles your heart instead of dazzling it. And all he wants is one thing: that their two hands find each other, that the dream comes true, that she stays close to his heart for as long as they both live.