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

Alhambra

Spanish
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 palace-fortress in Granada, famed for its Moorish architecture, gardens, tiles, arches, and fountains.

Detailed Definition
The Alhambra is one of the great poetic emblems of Spain: a place where Islamic art, memory, exile, luxury, and loss converge. Its courts, water channels, carved walls, and mountain setting make it a natural image for vanished splendour and delicate beauty. In poetry, it often suggests the romance of Moorish Spain, the fragility of empire, and the way history survives as atmosphere, ornament, echo, and dream.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Alhambra's walls bear Ibn Zamrak's poems praising its eternal beauty and divine light; In Théophile Gautier's lines, the Alhambra sighs with the Moor's last farewell to Granada's paradise; Borges evoked the Alhambra as a labyrinth of time where history dissolves into dream; Lorca described the golden towers of the Alhambra against the Albaizín's white houses; The poet found inspiration in the Alhambra's fountains, where water sings of lost empires; Under Alhambra's arches, the moonlight inspires verses of love and conquest.
Additional Notes
Alhambra serves as a powerful symbol in Spanish poetry for the lost paradise of Al-Andalus, blending sensuality, intricate beauty, and melancholy; poets like Washington Irving and Federico García Lorca used its arches, muqarnas, Court of the Lions, and reflecting pools to evoke cultural fusion, fleeting glory, and Moorish nostalgia. Usage tip: pair with images of water, light through lattice, or night jasmine to heighten romantic or elegiac tone. Related to Granada, Darro river, and Reconquista themes; ideal for exploring hybrid Iberian identity and the tension between Christian and Islamic aesthetics in verse.
Also Known As
Alhambra Palace Red Fortress
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