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

Condor

Birds
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 massive New World vulture symbolizing power, freedom, and spiritual transcendence.

Detailed Definition
The condor soars at great heights, making it a potent symbol of vision, liberation, and connection to the divine in Andean and North American indigenous traditions. Poets invoke the condor to express aspirations beyond earthly limits, ecological reverence, or cultural resilience. Its near-extinction and recovery also make it a modern emblem of conservation and the sacredness of wild spaces in environmental poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pablo Neruda invokes the condor as a “black angel of the Andes,” symbolizing spiritual elevation; In U.S. eco-poetry, the California condor’s recovery mirrors national redemption; The condor’s vast wingspan in verse represents the scale of wilderness and human insignificance; Poets contrast the condor’s purity with the pollution it soars above; In indigenous Andean poetry, the condor is a messenger between earth and sky.
Additional Notes
The condor—particularly the Andean and California species—is one of the world’s largest flying birds and a powerful symbol of spiritual transcendence, freedom, and ecological recovery. In Andean cosmology, it mediates between earth and sky; in U.S. poetry, its near-extinction and captive breeding programs make it an emblem of conservation hope. Neruda and other Latin American poets invoke it as a national and sacred icon. Related terms: “New World vulture,” “keystone scavenger,” “sky messenger.” Avoid conflating it with eagles; emphasize its soaring grace and cultural specificity.
Also Known As
Andean Condor California Condor Vultur gryphus Gymnogyps californianus
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