The Slavic for Whore (Kurva)

Lyrics

The title on your lesson plan is incorrect. 
A transcription error from the registrar.
We are not in Seoul today.
We are in a chilly room in Prague, around 1523.

[Verse 1]
The dictionary is open. Dal's edition, from 1863.
It smells of dust and binding glue.
On the board, I write the root. 
Proto-Slavic. 
*Kъrva.
Just the one syllable.
It meant 'prostitute.'
It meant 'whore.'
There is no ambiguity in the early texts.

[Chorus]
One root, one sound, a single syllable.
From the Vistula to the Volga, it travels.
Polish, Russian, Czech, Ukrainian.
The family tree grows in white dust on the black slate.
It changes its clothes, its accent, its utility.
But it never changes its bones.

[Verse 2]
Jan Hus wrote around 1410.
He said you must speak the tongue of the people, even its baseness.
In the Acta Tomiciana, a woman is pinned by it in a slander case.
A name she has to carry.
In some villages, they say it was a joke between sisters.
A term of endearment, now lost.
A strange and private tenderness.

[Chorus]
One root, one sound, a single syllable.
From the Vistula to the Volga, it travels.
Polish, Russian, Czech, Ukrainian.
The family tree grows in white dust on the black slate.
It changes its clothes, its accent, its utility.
But it never changes its bones.

[Bridge]
I wipe my fingers on a cloth.
The dust is on everything.
But the dictionary does not record the voices of the women.
Only the men who named them.
Their defense is not recorded.
Their story is a gap in the record.
A blank space on the page where a life was lived.

[Outro]
A single syllable.
It can be an interjection when you burn the bread.
It can be a weapon.
It can be the end of a conversation.
Or a name you never asked for.