Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta
"The nectar for the ear that is Kṛṣṇa" — the poem of Bilvamaṅgala Ṭhākura, who called himself Līlāśuka, "the parrot of the pastimes". Three āśvāsas, 328 verses, and each verse is complete in itself: no narrative, no sequence of events. The poet speaks always of what he sees now — the boy with the flute, with milk at his lip, with the peacock feather, dancing on a palm, hiding behind a hem, stealing butter, glancing sidelong. The same few things — the lips, the smile, the glance, the sound of the flute, the dark colour — return in hundreds of turns, and that returning is the book: not an account of Kṛṣṇa but an inability to look away. Separation is rare here; the recurring word is "when?" The Gauḍīya tradition knows the book by a particular occasion: returning from the south, Śrī Caitanya brought two manuscripts back with him, and this was one. The text survives in two recensions, southern and Bengali; the southern, complete and gapless, is translated here.
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