According to Enya.sk, Enya explained to the Late, Late Show talkshow in 2005:

I went to sing it “Water Shows the Hidden Heart” [in English] and it didn’t work. It actually didn’t work. And this is one of the reasons we do try other languages, because we always feel that we’re trying to get across what the song is about. I’m going to try and sort of capture an emotion, what the song is about. So, if the language is wrong, then we feel, that we have to look further. So Roma then came in with the first line, which is, ‘Syoombraya,’ and I went to sing it, and that’s how [Loxian] started.

Lyricist Roma Ryan also said in the album’s promotional box:

This is a song telling the story of a man who is looking for whom he loves and has lost. It describes his emotional journey in images – cities, islands, valleys. Memories and emotions take a physical form, a visualization. The lyric itself is adapted from a book of the same name which describes these places, this journey.