In plain words
O tongue, knower of tastes, lover of sweetness, I tell you what is Satya, what is good, what is highest: recite the sweet syllables Gōvinda, Dāmōdara, Mādhava.
Tongue! Tongue that knows the tastes! Sweet tongue! Tongue of sacrifice, tongue of patience, what shall I teach you? Your patience, the sacrifice you make, your generosity, your dignity are matched only by you, and by no one else. Tongue! You are very peaceable. You are very soft. Though you live between thirty-two teeth like knives, how carefully you go about! I live in this world. I am afraid of everyone. Living among so many demons, how peacefully, how carefully you move! Had men only your care, how they would have been saved! Shall we look at your sacrifice? When anything sweet is put on you, it sends it down, saying, “This is sweet, O fire of digestion; you take it.” When it is something bad, “Chī! Chī! Take a thing like this; you yourself produced it,” and it hands it to Mother Earth. And how does it guard its dignity? It stays hidden in its own place, in its own house alone, and carries out all its duties well. It does not roam from this room to that, from that room to this, like a cat. Like the children of today, like cats, like rats, it does not come out. Though I talk for an hour, My tongue does not come out. It lives with great dignity. It condemns the one who has done a bad deed. It praises the one who has done a good deed, a good deed. Seeing a good man, it praises him: “You are as great as God, sir!” Seeing the bad deeds they have done, it condemns them: “Beast!” It is ever so just. That is why Jayadēva gave it good counsel. What is that counsel? Gōvindā, Dāmōdarā, Mādhavēti. But today we use our tongue to condemn this one and that one. We put it to work at mocking this one and that one too. As for our eyes, the crow is better than we are. We fix our eyes on looking at what is bad, and we do not use them to look at what is good. Riding to college on his bicycle, he does not look at what is coming on his road. He keeps looking at the wall posters on the wall. Meanwhile a rickshaw knocks him down. Why should your gaze go there? Go along looking at the road. You are misusing your sight. This is called a crow's gaze. Even the crow is better. Whether joy comes to it or sorrow, it cries, “Kāvu, kāvu.” By “kāvu” it says, “O God, protect!” Man does not say even that. The crow comes and perches on the wall. Not even for a moment is its gaze steady. Our looks too are just like that. We keep looking at other people's faces and other people's clothes, but the broad feeling that we must recognise what our own duty is does not come to us.