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



Damask Rose

Flora
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 rose variety with intensely fragrant double blooms in pink or white, used for rose oil and perfume.

Detailed Definition
Damask roses symbolize passionate love, beauty, and sensuality in poetry. Their powerful fragrance makes them ideal for engaging the sense of smell and exploring how scent evokes memory and desire. The rose's association with perfume-making links it to luxury and the distillation of essence. In Persian and European poetry, damask roses represent the heights of beauty and the beloved's qualities. The flower's layered petals suggest complexity and depth, while its ephemeral blooming emphasizes beauty's transience.
Example
Example in poetry:
Damask roses with intense fragrance and deep pink color symbolize passionate love and sensual beauty; The rose's use in perfume and attar connects to poems about essence, distillation, and concentrated beauty; In Persian and Arabic poetry, damask roses represent paradise gardens and earthly delight; The layered petals provide imagery for complexity, unfolding, and hidden depths; Damask roses in medieval gardens add historical and romantic atmosphere to narrative poetry; The rose's ancient cultivation connects to themes of tradition and timeless beauty
Additional Notes
Damask rose is famed for perfume and rose oil, so it’s ideal for sensuous writing where scent matters as much as colour. Its “antique” status and densely double blooms make it a symbol of luxuriant tradition, love refined by time, and the crafted beauty of gardens and perfumery. It can also imply the labour behind elegance: petals gathered, distilled, transformed. In intertextual poems, damask may hint at the Near East, trade, and historical exchange.
Also Known As
Rosa damascena Damascene Rose rose
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