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 E

Erice

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

A mountaintop town in western Sicily, site of a famed temple to Aphrodite (Venus Erycina) and later a Christian shrine

Detailed Definition
Erice (Eryx) was sacred to Aphrodite, Astarte, and Demeter, blending Phoenician and Greek cults. Its height offered panoramic views. In poetry, Erice symbolizes syncretic worship, celestial love, and the sacred mountain as a place of convergence—often evoking the goddess’s dual nature as both warrior and lover, and the layered spiritual history of Sicily’s peaks.
Example
Example in poetry:
Virgil’s Aeneid mentions Erice (Eryx) as a Sicilian mountain sacred to Venus; Ovid describes Erice as a site of divine contest and celestial favor; Medieval pilgrim poetry evokes Erice’s shrine as a beacon for sailors; Romantic travelers reference Erice’s summit for its panoramic solitude and mythic aura; Modern Sicilian poets use Erice to meditate on layered sacred geographies.
Additional Notes
Erice, perched on Mount Erice in western Sicily, hosted a famed temple to Aphrodite Erycina, attracting pilgrims from Carthage and Rome. The goddess was syncretized with Astarte and Venus, reflecting Sicily’s multicultural religious landscape. Later, the site became a Christian shrine to Mary, continuing its role as a sacred mountaintop. In poetry, Erice symbolizes the layering of cultures, the persistence of feminine divinity, and the interplay between love, war, and devotion—especially in Mediterranean lyric traditions.
Also Known As
Monte Erice Eryx
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