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

Dracon

Historical Location
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

Not a place but sometimes confused; included here as a poetic reference to Draco’s Athens or draconian law

Detailed Definition
Though Dracon is a person (an Athenian lawgiver), “Dracon” occasionally appears in poetry as a metonym for archaic Athens or its famously harsh laws. Poets use it to evoke themes of justice, severity, and the evolution of civic order—from blood feud to codified law. In historical verse, it symbolizes the tension between necessary discipline and excessive punishment, often serving as a contrast to Solonian moderation.
Example
Example in poetry:
Dracon; In Athenian law, Dracon is the name of the legislator whose code was written in blood, his laws so harsh they became proverbial; Dracon; A 19th-century poem writes, “Dracon—whose pen wrote death for stealing bread, and whose name became the synonym for cruelty”; Dracon; In a modern poem, “Dracon: the man who believed justice could be carved in stone, and forgot that hearts bleed”; Dracon; A student poem reads: “Dracon’s laws are gone—but his shadow still hangs over every harsh decree”; Dracon; The poet writes, “Dracon did not create justice—he created fear, and fear outlived the tablets”; Dracon; “They remember Dracon’s laws, but forget: the first law was written in blood, and the last in silence.”
Additional Notes
Dracon, though not a place, functions poetically as a metonym for the harshness of early Athenian law; its use evokes a world of rigid order, blood feuds, and the transition from vengeance to justice, often appearing in political verse or historical elegies that mourn the loss of older, more brutal codes
Also Known As
Draco Athenian law code
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