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 D

Death Coach

Supernatural
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 phantom carriage believed to travel before a death or collect the dead. It is an omen of fatal passage.

Detailed Definition
The death coach is a ghostly carriage from European and Celtic folklore, often heard or seen traveling at night before a death. Its wheels, horses, and unseen driver give death a ceremonial but threatening movement through the landscape. Poets may use the death coach in ballad-like scenes of storm, road, and midnight listening. It transforms private mortality into a public procession, suggesting that death arrives with its own ancient route and ritual authority.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet might describe “the death coach rolling without horses through the rain,” using the spectral vehicle as an omen of approaching death; In an Irish folklore-inspired poem, the death coach can arrive before a death in the household, heightening narrative suspense; “Its black wheels turned in my dream, the death coach seeking our gate” makes private fear take a concrete form; The death coach works well in ballads because its movement, sound, and dark appearance create a dramatic entrance
Additional Notes
The death coach is a phantom vehicle associated with collecting souls or announcing death. It is especially effective in ominous narrative verse, where the sound of wheels or horses can signal fate approaching.
Also Known As
Phantom Coach Death Carriage
Skip to main content