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

Hold water

Idiomatic Phrase
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

An idiomatic phrase meaning to be logically sound, valid, or defensible; liquid-container metaphor used in poetry to assess argument integrity, suggesting coherence through physical containment and structural reliability.

Detailed Definition
Hold water means to be logical, credible, convincing, or able to withstand scrutiny. In poetry, it can apply to arguments, excuses, stories, philosophies, accusations, or beliefs. The image treats an idea like a vessel that must not leak, making abstract reasoning concrete. A poet may use it in sceptical or conversational contexts, especially when testing inherited truths or self-justifications. The phrase also invites water imagery: doubt seeps through cracks, while sound truth retains its shape under pressure.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet might say the lover's excuse does not hold water beneath the clear moon of truth; In satire, a politician's speech may not hold water once the facts are named; The phrase hold water means that an argument or explanation is sound enough to survive testing; In a courtroom poem, a witness's story may fail to hold water by the final stanza.
Additional Notes
Hold water means be sound, logical, or defensible, as a vessel must contain water without leaking. In poetry, it is useful for arguments, excuses, theories, alibis, and beliefs. The metaphor invites imagery of cracks, bowls, buckets, wells, and seepage. Students should notice that the idiom tests integrity: if an idea leaks, it cannot sustain meaning. It can also be used ironically in poems where emotion overwhelms rational explanation.
Also Known As
make sense
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