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

chaffer

Archaic Terms
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

To bargain or haggle, especially over price—connoting persistent negotiation, sometimes with a tone of rustic or mercantile life.

Detailed Definition
“Chaffer” depicts mercantile negotiation, often with negative connotations of greed or pettiness. In pastoral or satirical poetry, it contrasts rustic simplicity with urban avarice. The term’s archaic flavor suits historical or moralizing contexts, where commerce corrupts purity. Its rhythmic bounce mimics the back-and-forth of trade, enriching scenes of market life or ethical compromise.
Example
Example in poetry:
"They chaffered over the price of bread while children starved," a social protest lyric; In Chaucer: "He chaffered long for silken thread"; "Chaffer not with fate," warns the oracle; Shakespeare’s merchants "chaffer" in Venice; "She chaffered with the devil for her soul," a dark ballad; Gold chaffers for all things, even virtue.
Additional Notes
“Chaffer” implies haggling with shrewdness or pettiness; in market scenes or satires of commerce, it underscores human greed or the commodification of relationships, especially in urban or mercantile poetic settings.
Also Known As
bargain haggle trade
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