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 G

Guillemot

Birds
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 cliff-nesting seabird with dark plumage and a sharp, pointed bill.

Detailed Definition
Guillemots appear in poetry as symbols of precarious existence, fidelity, and the stark beauty of coastal margins. Their nesting on narrow ledges evokes themes of vulnerability and resilience in harsh environments. Often grouped with other auks, they represent communal survival and the rhythms of marine life. Poets use guillemots to reflect on climate vulnerability, the fragility of breeding grounds, or the stoic endurance of creatures living on the edge of land and sea.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Seamus Heaney’s coastal poems, guillemots crowd cliff ledges like “packed sardines,” symbolizing precarious community; The guillemot’s black plumage and white eye-markings appear in descriptive poetry to evoke the stark beauty of seabird colonies; Poets reference the guillemot’s single egg—pointed to roll in circles—to explore themes of singular focus and vulnerability; In ecopoetry, guillemots dying from oil spills become potent symbols of marine fragility; Their diving prowess inspires metaphors for plunging into unknown depths, whether oceanic or psychological; The guillemot’s call, a high-pitched whistle, adds acoustic texture to poems set on northern coasts.
Additional Notes
Guillemot: A cliff-nesting seabird with striking plumage during breeding season, guillemots (or murres) represent communal breeding, oceanic life, and vulnerability to environmental change. Their upright posture on narrow ledges offers metaphors for precarious balance or collective survival in harsh conditions.
Also Known As
Common Guillemot Thick-billed Murre Black Guillemot
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