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

Albatross

Birds
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

A symbolic burden in poetry, derived from Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," representing guilt, consequence, or inescapable responsibility.

Detailed Definition
In poetry, "albatross" symbolizes a burdensome curse or guilt, famously derived from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where the killing of the bird brings supernatural retribution; the term now functions as a powerful metaphor for psychological or moral weight carried by a speaker or character.
Example
Example in poetry:
Albatross: In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the albatross symbolizes guilt and burden, hung around the mariner’s neck as punishment for his crime.
Additional Notes
Albatross: Symbolically derived from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” where it represents guilt or burden; in poetry, often used metaphorically for a psychological or moral weight—note its transformation from omen to curse.
Other Meanings of “Albatross”
Also Known As
Burden Refrain curse Repeated weight Albatross around one's neck
Skip to main content