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

Home › Glossary › Letter A

absit omen

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

May the omen be absent; a superstitious phrase warding off bad luck when mentioning something inauspicious.

Detailed Definition
Absit omen expresses the speaker's hope that merely mentioning something unfortunate will not cause it to occur. In poetry, this phrase captures the ancient belief in the power of words to shape reality and the vulnerability of human fate to unseen forces. Poets employ it when treading near dangerous topics—death, disaster, betrayal—as both genuine superstition and ironic commentary on human anxiety. The phrase embodies the tension between rational discourse and magical thinking, between naming and invoking. It appears in poems exploring prophecy, fate, and the relationship between language and reality, serving as a verbal charm against the very things poetry must sometimes articulate.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet mentioning death might quickly add "absit omen" as protection against inviting the fate they name; In dramatic monologue, a character might say "He'll fail, absit omen, though I wish him well" revealing both prediction and superstition; Contemporary poets use "absit omen" to acknowledge the magical thinking that persists despite rational skepticism; A wedding poem might mention potential disasters with "absit omen" appended to each, both invoking and warding off bad luck; Gothic poetry employs the phrase when narrators speak of horrors they fear to summon: "The dead might rise—absit omen—on such a night"; Poets exploring anxiety use "absit omen" to dramatize the belief that naming danger makes it more likely to occur
Additional Notes
Absit omen reveals ancient anxiety about performative utterance—the belief that speaking creates reality. The phrase functions as verbal prophylaxis, attempting to prevent the materialization of what language conjures. Poets use it to dramatize superstition, but also to explore deeper questions about language's power. Related to apotropaic magic and the concept of the evil eye. The phrase creates productive tension: the speaker must name the feared thing to ward it off, but naming itself risks invocation. Particularly useful in poems about prophecy, curse, or the relationship between word and world. Contemporary poets often employ it with knowing irony, acknowledging that educated speakers don't really believe in such magic—or do they? The phrase captures how superstition persists despite rational skepticism.
Also Known As
may it not be an omen heaven forbid
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