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



Colophon

Historical Location
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

An ancient Ionian city in Lydia, famed for its cavalry, luxurious citizens, and poet Mimnermus

Detailed Definition
Colophon was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League, noted for its wealth and refined lifestyle. The proverb “Colophonian luxury” entered literary discourse as a byword for decadence. Poets reference Colophon to critique or celebrate opulence, or to honor Mimnermus, whose elegies on youth and mortality influenced later lyric traditions—making the city a touchstone for reflections on time, pleasure, and civic pride.
Example
Example in poetry:
Colophon; In Strabo, Colophon is the Ionian city where the poet Xenophanes first questioned the gods’ human forms, his verses echoing in the agora; Colophon; A 17th-century lyric reads, “Colophon—where the philosopher’s voice cracked the idols and the wind carried his doubt to the sea”; Colophon; In a modern poem, “Colophon: the city that dared to ask why the gods looked like kings”; Colophon; A student poem writes: “Colophon taught me that poetry begins when the tongue asks, ‘Is this true?’”; Colophon; The poet writes, “Colophon is not remembered for its walls—but for the question that broke them”; Colophon; “They built temples in Colophon, but the poets built doubt—and doubt outlived the gods.”
Additional Notes
Colophon, as the home of Mimnermus, is poetically tied to the elegiac tradition of melancholy and transience; its luxurious citizens and maritime trade lend it a tone of refined decadence, making it a frequent setting for poems on the fleeting nature of youth, wealth, and the bittersweet beauty of the Ionian coast
Other Meanings of “Colophon”
Also Known As
Kolophon
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