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



Great Mystery

Mythology
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

The Lakota term for the sacred, all-encompassing divine mystery (Wakan Tanka), representing ultimate spiritual unity and power.

Detailed Definition
Great Mystery (Wakan Tanka) is the Lakota concept of the sacred, encompassing all spiritual forces in a unified, mysterious whole. It is not a personified god but a profound presence in all life. Central to Lakota prayer and philosophy, it emphasizes humility and interconnectedness. Poets reference Great Mystery to evoke spiritual awe, the limits of language, and the indigenous understanding of the sacred as immanent and relational.
Example
Example in poetry:
Great Mystery, the Lakota Wakan Tanka, flows through poems as the sacred breath in all things; A verse describes Great Mystery as the space between heartbeats where prayer lives; Poets use Great Mystery to transcend doctrine: “No name holds Him, yet all names point”; In intertribal poetry, Great Mystery unites diverse creation stories; His presence becomes the silence after drumming—deep, reverent, and full.
Additional Notes
Great Mystery (Wakan Tanka in Lakota) is a complex, multifaceted sacred reality encompassing all beings and forces, not a single deity; it reflects a non-anthropomorphic spirituality—poets should convey its ineffability and relational nature, avoiding reduction to a Western “God” concept.
Also Known As
Wakan Tanka Gitche Manitou
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