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

Curlew

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 large shorebird with a long, downcurved bill and mournful call.

Detailed Definition
The curlew’s evocative cry and coastal habitat make it a frequent symbol of longing, solitude, and the passage of time in poetry. Its call often punctuates twilight or desolate landscapes, evoking melancholy or existential reflection. Poets such as W.B. Yeats and Matthew Arnold use the curlew to underscore themes of loss, exile, and the haunting beauty of the natural world, particularly in elegiac or pastoral contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
W.B. Yeats’ “The Curlew” uses the bird’s mournful cry to symbolize lost love and the haunting persistence of memory; In Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” the curlew’s call (implied in coastal desolation) underscores the retreat of faith and certainty; Irish poets often invoke the curlew as a national symbol of vanishing wilderness and cultural erosion; The curlew’s long, downcurved bill appears in descriptive poetry to illustrate evolutionary adaptation to tidal mudflats; Ecopoets mourn the curlew’s decline, using its absence as a silence that speaks louder than song; Its cry at twilight makes it a frequent motif in elegies, bridging day and night, presence and absence.
Additional Notes
Curlew: With its haunting, bubbling call and long, downcurved bill, the curlew often appears in poetry as a voice of melancholy or wilderness, especially in coastal or moorland settings. Its declining populations add an elegiac tone to modern references. The Eurasian curlew’s cry is frequently likened to a lament, making it ideal for themes of loss or solitude.
Also Known As
Eurasian Curlew Long-billed Curlew Whimbrel (sometimes confused regionally)
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