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 H

Haloa

Historical Festival
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

Ancient Athenian winter festival honoring Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus, with agricultural offerings and women’s rites

Detailed Definition
Haloa, held at Eleusis in December, featured first-fruits offerings, phallic symbols, and women’s feasting with ritual obscenities. In poetry, it appears as a fertility rite blending chthonic and Dionysian elements. Poets use it to explore the sacredness of harvest, female autonomy in ritual, and the earth’s regenerative power—making it a symbol of agrarian piety and the joyful, sometimes bawdy, celebration of life’s cycles.
Example
Example in poetry:
Athenian sources describe Haloa with phallic cakes and Demeter-Persephone rites; Poets use Haloa to explore agricultural fertility and female-centered mystery; In modern verse, Haloa symbolizes earth’s generative power and taboo joy; The festival appears in December poetry as winter’s hidden growth; Poets contrast Haloa’s secrecy with public festivals; Feminist poets reclaim Haloa as women’s ritual space.
Additional Notes
Haloa (December/January) was an Athenian festival of Demeter and Dionysus near Eleusis, featuring taboo-breaking feasts and phallic symbols; restricted to women; in poetry, it evokes agrarian magic, female autonomy, and ritual inversion—ideal for feminist or mystery-cult verse exploring sanctioned transgression and the sacredness of pleasure.
Also Known As
Haloa Festival Athenian Haloa
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