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

attainder

Law And Justice
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

Attainder is the historical legal loss of civil rights, property, and hereditary status that followed a conviction for treason or certain serious crimes.

Detailed Definition
In English common law, a person convicted of treason or felony could be “attainted,” meaning legally declared dishonoured and stripped of rights such as owning property, bringing lawsuits, or passing an inheritance to descendants. Attainder could also involve “corruption of blood,” preventing the person’s family from inheriting through them. In poetry and historical writing, the word often evokes political persecution, disgrace, execution, or the destructive reach of royal and state power.
Example
Example in poetry:
In a poem about a fallen nobleman, a speaker might write: “His children bore the attainder of his name,” meaning that the father’s conviction deprived his descendants of legal standing or inheritance.
Additional Notes
The term comes from Old French ataindre, meaning “to convict” or “to stain.” Historically, attainder was especially associated with treason, because rulers could use it to destroy not only an accused person but also that person’s family line. A bill of attainder is a legislative act that declares a person guilty and imposes punishment without a judicial trial. The United States Constitution prohibits bills of attainder. Do not confuse attainder with simple imprisonment or execution: its distinctive feature is the legal loss of rights and, historically, the effect on inheritance. Related terms include forfeiture, corruption of blood, treason, and bill of attainder.
Also Known As
Civil Death Forfeiture of Rights Corruption of Blood Legal Disgrace
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