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

Hexen

Folklore
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

German term for witches, often associated with medieval persecution, forest rituals, and the use of flying ointments and animal familiars.

Detailed Definition
Hexen in poetry embody the historical terror of witch hunts and the erasure of female healers. They appear in feminist and historical verse as symbols of resistance—where the label “witch” was weaponized to silence wisdom, and the forest became sanctuary.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Scottish ballads, “hexen” is the plural of witch: “The hexen danced where the moon was thin”; in Goethe’s Faust, the witches’ sabbat is called “Hexenabend”; in Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” “the hexen” ride through the glen with hollow eyes; in Robert Burns’ “The Witches’ Night,” the hexen chant in the storm’s eye; in Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain,” the hexen are the forces that sink the ship; in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” the old woman’s gaze feels like hexen’s memory.
Additional Notes
Hexen is the German word for witches, deeply tied to medieval persecution, forest rituals, and flying ointments made of belladonna and henbane. In folklore, Hexen were often midwives, healers, or outcasts accused during times of plague. In poetry, the term evokes the violence of misogyny and the erasure of female knowledge. It is a linguistic anchor for poems on witch trials, state terror, and the silencing of dissent.
Also Known As
Witch Witches (German plural)
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