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 F

flail

Tools
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 flail is a traditional threshing tool made of a wooden handle joined to a swinging beater, used to separate grain from husks.

Detailed Definition
The agricultural flail strikes harvested cereal crops so that edible grain is released from stalks and chaff. Before mechanised threshing, its repeated blows and communal rhythm were familiar features of rural life. In poetry it may evoke harvest, poverty, seasonal labour, and the physical cost of subsistence. Because the hinged beater swings with violent force, the flail can also suggest punishment, battle, or uncontrolled suffering, while threshing itself becomes a metaphor for separating value from waste through ordeal.
Example
Example in poetry:
The farmer swung the flail, beating grain free from stalk and husk; A flail may symbolise hardship that separates what is valuable from what is useless; In harvest poetry, its repeated blows create a rhythm of communal labour; The storm flailed the trees as though threshing the leaves from their branches.
Additional Notes
The agricultural flail consists of a handle attached to a freely swinging beater, and its primary purpose is threshing grain. It should not be confused with later weapon forms that share the name. In poetry the tool evokes harvest, communal labour, poverty, and a pre-mechanised rural world. Its blows separate grain from stalk and chaff, encouraging metaphors of ordeal, judgement, and the discovery of value through suffering. Related terms include threshing, harvest, grain, chaff, winnowing, farm labour, beating, separation, hardship, sustenance, and seasonal rhythm.
Other Meanings of “flail”
Also Known As
threshing flail
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