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. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

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

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

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

0.015 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 Ships of Grief

by John Drinkwater

0.1240 − 0.5920i

Drawing the boundary…

Friends Old and New

by Edgar A. Guest

0.1364 − 0.5831i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

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

The Ships of Grief

by John Drinkwater

On seas where every pilot fails
A thousand thousand ships to-day
Ride with a moaning in their sails,
Through winds grey and waters grey.

They are the ships of grief. They go
As fleets are derelict and driven,
Estranged from every port they know,
Scarce asking fortitude of heaven.

No, do not hail them. Let them ride
Lonely as they would lonely be…
There is an hour will prove the tide,
There is a sun will strike the sea.

Friends Old and New

by Edgar A. Guest

Here's to the old friends true
Who share in all we do
And have learned all our ways
Through many yesterdays.
Theirs are the hearts that share
All that we meet of care;
Theirs are the eyes that see,
Though grave our faults may be,
The good that lies below.
That's why we love them so!

But here's to the happy day
When comes across our way
A new friend, blithe and bold,
To join the faithful old.
Glad is the sheltering door
To welcome in one more.
Brighter the fireplace where
We draw another chair,
But happiest, at day's end,
Are we to gain a friend.

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