The Verb the Romans Knew Twice (Sard)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
In the scriptorium of Bury St. Edmunds, 1380,
Geoffrey Chaucer, born 1343, dips his goose-quill pen.
The nib splits from overuse, ink from oak galls black as night.
He writes not 'sard' but its kin, 'swyve,' in the Miller's Tale.
The word 'sard,' Old English variant, lost by 1700.
It meant to couple, bluntly, in the chill of autumn rooms.

[Chorus]
Lexical extinction, a quiet vanishing.
'Sard' fades like tallow smoke, acrid and gone.
From Middle English glossaries, Hans Kurath's dictionary, 1952.
Melancholy in the margins, where scribes whispered it once.
The verb twice known to Romans.
But now, only echoes in forgotten prose.

[Verse 2]
Imagine the scribe, anonymous, at 8 PM, temperature dropping to 10 degrees Celsius.
The musty odor of old parchment mixes with burning tallow.
He scrawls 'sard' in a margin note, a jest about farm animals mating.
Double entendre in riddles, crude and earthy, 14th century humor.
No letters survive from the women or laborers who spoke it.
Their voices gaps in the record, oral shadows unscribed.

[Bridge]

The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, marks it 'obs. rare.'
Variant of 'swive,' both blunt, both buried.
Chaucer at 50, composing in London, age etching his brow.
What did the tavern storytellers say, under breath?
Lost to us, like the split nib discarded on the floor.

[Verse 3]
The manuscript, worn and frayed, rests in a university vault.
University of Michigan Press, Kurath's work preserving the trace.
'Sard,' the verb that slipped away, melancholy in its absence.
No direct accounts, only inferences from elite inks.
The wind howls through stone cracks, quill scratches parchment.
A word extinct, but here, in this song, briefly revived.

[Outro]

Lexical loss, tender and final.
'Sard'—whisper it now, feel the weight.