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


Compare Poets

Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.

Poet A

S.E.K. Mqhayi S.E.K. Mqhayi

Poet B

Myra Viola Wilds Myra Viola Wilds
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 58% Blended 58%
Swap sides Another related pair
S.E.K. Mqhayi

S.E.K. Mqhayi

1 December 1875 – 29 July 1945 (~70)
1 live poem · Xhosa

Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi, born on 1 December 1875 and died on 29 July 1945, occupies a foundational place in isiXhosa literature and in the intellectual history of South Africa. Poet, novelist, journalist, teacher, editor, translator, cultural historian, and public orator, he was much more than a writer in the narrow modern sense. He belonged to the lineage of the imbongi, the Xhosa praise poet whose task was to re…

“In those six years I learned much respecting Xhosa life, including the refinements of Xhosa language. If I had not been at Kentani for those six years, it seems to me as if I would not have been any help to my nation.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Myra Viola Wilds

Myra Viola Wilds

c. 1880 – c. 1935 (~55)
2 live poems · English

Myra Viola Wilds, born about 1880 and believed to have died about 1935, occupies an unusual and moving place in the history of American poetry. Her surviving reputation rests principally on a single small book, Thoughts of Idle Hours, published in 1915, yet the modest scale of that achievement should not obscure its significance. Wilds was a Kentucky-born poet, a dressmaker, a woman with limited formal education, and…

“Every line and verse in this little volume has been composed and written with my own hand notwithstanding the loss of my eyesight.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

S.E.K. Mqhayi
Myra Viola Wilds
1875 1945
They overlapped for 56 years (1880–1935). When Myra Viola Wilds was born, S.E.K. Mqhayi was about 5. S.E.K. Mqhayi was about 60 when Myra Viola Wilds died.
S.E.K. Mqhayi in history Myra Viola Wilds in history Years they were given

On the map

About 13,751 km separate Gqumahashe, Eastern Cape, South Africa from Mount Ollie, Kentucky, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

S.E.K. Mqhayi

Myra Viola Wilds

Open both on the History Atlas

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

S.E.K. Mqhayi only

african dead sacrifice communal mendi disaster africa collective grief

Myra Viola Wilds only

wilds love life mind self grass roots dewdrops light gems

From the biographies

S.E.K. Mqhayi: eastern cape, gqumahashe, imbongi, isixhosa literature, ityala lamawele, lovedale, prince of wales, izibongo. Myra Viola Wilds: mount ollie, kentucky, thoughts of idle hours, blindness, dressmaker, 1915 publication, sunshine, limited education.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

Sinking of the Mendi
S.E.K. Mqhayi
57%
Compare
Thoughts
Myra Viola Wilds
Sinking of the Mendi
S.E.K. Mqhayi
57%
Compare
Dewdrops
Myra Viola Wilds

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine

S.E.K. Mqhayi

1890 Education at Lovedale Institution
1914 Publication of 'Ityala Lamawele'
1916 Contribution to 'Umteteli wa Bantu'
1925 Praise Poem for the Prince of Wales
1930 Relocation to Johannesburg
1935 Founding Member of the Xhosa Literary Society
1940 Involvement with the African National Congress
1945 Recognition as 'Imbongi Yesizwe Jikelele'

Myra Viola Wilds

1880 Early Life in Mount Ollie, Kentucky
1911 Career as a Dressmaker
1911 Loss of Sight and Shift to Poetry
1915 Preface to 'Thoughts of Idle Hours'
1915 Publication of 'Thoughts of Idle Hours'

Emotional landscapes

S.E.K. Mqhayi: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Myra Viola Wilds: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality.

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