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.

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 G

Ghazal couplet

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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 rhyming unit in the ghazal form composed of two autonomous lines sharing a refrain

Detailed Definition
A Ghazal couplet (or sher) is the fundamental unit of the ghazal, a Persian-Arabic-Urdu poetic form consisting of autonomous, thematically linked couplets that share a refrain (radif) and rhyme (qafia); each couplet stands alone yet contributes to an overarching meditation on love, loss, or divine longing, with the poet often inserting their name (takhallus) in the final couplet—exemplified by Rumi or Ghalib—creating a mosaic of lyrical intensity where repetition and variation enact spiritual yearning.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ghazal couplet: “In the garden of longing, I bloom alone. / Even the moon hides her face, ashamed.”; Formal requirement: radif and qafia; Example: “Your name is my prayer, my curse, my stone. / Without you, I’m dust on the road, unknown.”; Each couplet stands alone yet echoes theme
Additional Notes
Individual couplet within ghazal. Each autonomous yet part of whole. Related: ghazal, Persian prosody. Study: how couplets connect and stand alone simultaneously.
Also Known As
sher bayat bayt
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