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



Clemency

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

Mercy shown by an authority toward someone convicted or punished. It can represent grace that interrupts strict justice.

Detailed Definition
Clemency is an act of official mercy that reduces or forgives a punishment, sometimes through a pardon, commutation, or reprieve. In poetry, it creates tension between law and compassion: the condemned person waits for a human decision within an impersonal system. Poets may invoke clemency to examine forgiveness, power, racial or class inequity, and the uneasy possibility that mercy can be granted or withheld.
Example
Example in poetry:
A historical poem may portray clemency as mercy granted to a condemned prisoner by a ruler or governor; “Clemency arrived too late for the gallows’ shadow,” emphasizes the tragic timing of mercy; A speaker can ask for clemency from a parent, using the legal term to heighten a child’s fear of punishment; In a poem about reconciliation, clemency may represent a difficult decision to lessen punishment without denying harm
Additional Notes
Clemency is mercy granted by an authority, often through a pardon, commutation, or reprieve. It may reduce or remove punishment without necessarily declaring that the conviction was wrong. In poetry, clemency can represent grace, political power, or an interruption of harsh judgment. Its ambiguity can also reveal the unequal power between the one who forgives and the one who must ask.
Also Known As
Executive Clemency Mercy Forgiveness
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