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

Caryatid

Architecture
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 sculpted female figure used as a supporting column. It may represent grace carrying weight, endurance, or the human body made architectural.

Detailed Definition
A caryatid is a carved female figure that performs the work of a column, holding an entablature or roof upon her head. In poetry, she can embody the tension between beauty and labor, dignity and imposed burden. Her stillness may evoke generations of women asked to support households, histories, or institutions without recognition. A poem can treat the caryatid as an emblem of resilience, but also question the aesthetic tradition that turns a living body into decorative structure.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Four caryatids hold the porch aloft, their stone heads bowed” invokes sculpted female figures used as columns; A feminist poem can contrast the apparent grace of caryatids with the labor of endlessly carrying architectural weight; “She became a caryatid in the family house, supporting every roofbeam of need” turns the term into an extended metaphor; William Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge” offers a useful contrast, since its cityscape can invite poets to notice how buildings seem to stand like human bodies
Additional Notes
A caryatid makes a human figure bear architectural weight. It is useful for images of labor, endurance, gendered expectation, or beauty made responsible for support.
Also Known As
Caryatide Female Column
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