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

Converb construction

Grammar
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 non-finite verb form (common in some languages) that functions adverbially to express time, cause, or manner, often used for poetic concision.

Detailed Definition
A Converb construction is a grammatical form (common in Turkic, Mongolic, and some Indigenous languages) that links clauses through non-finite verb forms indicating simultaneous or sequential action; in translated or influenced poetry, converbs enable fluid, paratactic narration without conjunctions, fostering a cinematic or meditative pace—as in the work of poets engaging with Siberian or Native American oral traditions, where action unfolds in continuous, interconnected motion.
Example
Example in poetry:
Converb construction appears in Mongolian and Turkic poetry, where verb forms link actions without conjunctions; In Sanskrit kāvya poetry, converbs like “gacchan” (going) create fluid narrative; Modern poet Ko Un uses Korean converb-like syntax in “Maninbo” to link vignettes; In Inuit oral poetry, converb structures connect natural and human actions; Contemporary poet Ocean Vuong uses converb-like participles in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”: “running, laughing, bleeding”.
Additional Notes
Converb construction uses non-finite verb forms connecting clauses (e.g., "Walking home, she sang"). Common in poetry for compression. Creates subordination without conjunctions. Watch for participial phrases linking actions.
Also Known As
Converb phrase adverbial verb construction participial construction gerund-like form
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