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 I

Ilium

Historical Location
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

Ilium: The Latin and poetic name for Troy, the ancient city besieged in Homer's Iliad, symbolizing epic heroism, tragic downfall, and the enduring theme of war's cost.

Detailed Definition
Ilium is the Latin name for Troy, central to the foundational myth of Western literature. Its fall symbolizes the cost of pride, the fragility of cities, and the origins of Roman destiny (via Aeneas). Poets from Homer to Tennyson use Ilium to explore heroism, fate, and the enduring power of mythic memory.
Example
Example in poetry:
Homer’s Iliad names Ilium (Troy) as city of Helen’s war and Hector’s fall; A Renaissance epic reimagines Ilium as cautionary tale of pride; In a modern Turkish poem, Ilium (Hisarlik) embodies contested heritage and tourism; A postwar lyric uses Ilium to explore how ruins become symbols; A minimalist verse reduces Ilium to horse shadow and Simois mud; A feminist reinterpretation names Ilium as city of women’s silenced laments.
Additional Notes
Ilium (Troy) is the archetypal besieged city, central to Greek and Roman foundational myth; Roman poets like Virgil reframe it as the origin of Roman destiny—essential for understanding how historical locations become vessels of national identity in epic.
Also Known As
Troy Ilion
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