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 C

cards

Games
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

Cards refer to a deck of playing cards used in numerous games of chance and skill, typically divided into four suits.

Detailed Definition
Playing cards enter poetry as symbols of fortune, social hierarchy, and deception, appearing in works from the Renaissance onward. Sir Walter Raleigh's "On the Cards and Dice" uses them prophetically to foretell turmoil among kings. In later poetry, cards evoke gambling dens, the shuffle of fate, and the hand one is dealt in life, allowing poets to comment on class, chance, and the theatricality of human dealings through the familiar imagery of the pack.
Example
Example in poetry:
Cards themselves, in their suits and ranks, supply poets with the entire vocabulary of fortune; From the tarot to the poker deck, the pack carries hierarchy and chance; “He shuffled the cards of the year and dealt another winter” illustrates temporal risk; Educational verse presents the deck as a portable map of human possibility; Poets keep the cards when the hand one is given must be played.
Additional Notes
Cards, in their four suits and thirteen ranks, supply poetry with a complete portable hierarchy and a ready language of fortune. The deck’s dual nature—chance and system—allows poets to move freely between luck and structure. Classroom discussion can explore how different games activate different aspects of the same fifty-two objects. Related terms include every specific card-game name. The pack remains inexhaustible because it can be shuffled into almost any social or cosmic order.
Also Known As
Playing Cards Deck of Fate Fortune Cards
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