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

Cowl

World Religion
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 hood or long, hooded cloak worn by monks, particularly in Christian monastic orders.

Detailed Definition
The cowl is a powerful symbol of the monastic life, representing renunciation, humility, and separation from the world. In poetry, donning the cowl signifies a radical commitment to God, a death to the old self and rebirth into a spiritual community. The image of the cowled figure evokes silence, anonymity, and ascetic dedication. Poets use it to explore the tensions between solitude and community, the world and the cloister, and the transformation of identity that occurs when one takes on a religious habit.
Example
Example in poetry:
In medieval monastic poetry, the cowl signifies humility: “Pull the cowl low—let the world see only your silence”; In contemporary verse, the cowl becomes metaphor for introspection: “I wear my cowl of grief—no one sees the tears inside”; In Buddhist poetry, robes (like cowls) mark renunciation: “One robe, one bowl—the cowl of freedom”; Poets use the cowl to contrast outer appearance and inner life: “Beneath the cowl, a storm of questions.”
Additional Notes
The cowl, worn by Benedictine and Cistercian monks, signifies humility, enclosure, and withdrawal from vanity; its hood can be drawn for solitude during prayer; in poetry, the cowl evokes monastic silence, hiddenness, and the “clothing” of a new identity in Christ or the Dharma—contrasting with worldly display and noise.
Other Meanings of “Cowl”
Also Known As
Habit Hood Monastic Hood
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