A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard



Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

0.028 apart. A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

This number is read from the build of the lines. The bright edge is that number, carried outward until the pattern repeats.

The Snake

by Arthur Davison Ficke

−0.4415 − 0.1310i

Drawing the boundary…

The Fellowship

by Katharine Lee Bates

−0.4201 − 0.1495i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.

The Snake

by Arthur Davison Ficke

With patterned mottlings of diagonal scales, his head
Rose up slowly out of the water-cress.
Sickened, I struck—and he lay writhing, dead.
And I knew less
Of why I struck than he, dying slowly, knew
Of why he had been smitten, by what thunder.

In a bewildered silence I still view
My deed with wonder….

The Fellowship

by Katharine Lee Bates

When brambles vex me sore and anguish me,
Then I remember those pale martyr feet
That trod on burning shares and drank the heat,
As it had been God's dew, with ecstasy.

And when some evanescent sunset glow
Renews the beauty-sting, I set my pride
On that great fellowship of those who know
The artist's yearning, yet are self-denied.

Feast me no feasts that for the few are spread,
With holy cup of brotherhood ungraced,
For though I sicken at my daily bread,
Bitter and black, I crave the human taste.

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Track 1
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