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.

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

Acroterion

Architecture
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

An acroterion is an ornament set at the apex or corners of a pediment. In poetry, it can suggest a final flourish crowning a scene or thought.

Detailed Definition
An acroterion stands where a roofline reaches its most ceremonial points, often taking the form of a statue, leaf, or vessel. A poem may use it as an image of ornament at the edge of necessity: the small, extravagant detail that rises above a severe structure. It can crown an elegy, a description of ruins, or a meditation on how beauty persists at the highest and most exposed points of memory.
Example
Example in poetry:
The poem crowns its ruined temple with an acroterion, a small statue standing at the roof peak; Use acroterion as a visual metaphor in “At each gable, grief raised its bronze acroterion”; A speaker may notice an acroterion silhouetted against dawn to emphasize a building’s sacred outline; In a poem about survival, the acroterion can represent the final ornament that remains after the walls have fallen
Additional Notes
Derived from Greek temple architecture, an acroterion often took the form of a statue, palmette, or urn placed at a pediment’s summit or corners. In a poem, use it for an image that visibly crowns a passage: a bird on a roof peak, a last word that ornaments a stanza, or a gesture of ceremonial completion. Related ideas include pinnacle, finial, and pediment.
Also Known As
Acroterium
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