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 B

burin

Tools
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 burin is a steel engraving tool with a sharp, angled point used to cut lines into metal, wood, or stone.

Detailed Definition
The burin, also called a graver in some contexts, is pushed by hand to incise controlled lines for engraving, printmaking, jewellery, and carving. Its precision links it with patient artistic labour and the creation of images through removal rather than addition. In poetry it may evoke old print shops, memorial inscriptions, coins, or finely worked surfaces. Because the tool leaves enduring grooves, poets can use it as a metaphor for memory, age, grief, or experience cutting its design into a face, landscape, or consciousness.
Example
Example in poetry:
The engraver guided the burin, cutting fine shadows into the copper plate; A burin may symbolise the slow inscription of experience upon a face; The poet's words were a burin carving memory into silence; In a poem about printmaking, each engraved line may represent patience and artistic control.
Additional Notes
The burin is associated with engraving, printmaking, jewellery, and fine carving. Unlike a chisel struck with a hammer, it is commonly pushed by hand to cut deliberate grooves into a surface. In poetry it may represent patient artistic labour, exact observation, or the permanent inscription of history and experience. Lines cut by a burin can be compared with wrinkles, writing, scars, or remembered events. Related terms include graver, engraving, etching, incision, copperplate, printmaking, carving, line, inscription, precision, artistry, and memory.
Also Known As
graver engraving tool
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