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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the 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.

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 K

Keep the peace

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

To maintain harmony and prevent conflict; to act as a mediating force that prevents hostilities from breaking out.

Detailed Definition
From legal and diplomatic contexts, where keeping the peace is a formal obligation, this idiom describes the work of mediation, diplomacy, and conflict prevention. In poetry, it appears in works about family dynamics, political diplomacy, and the ethics of silence—exploring when keeping the peace is a virtue and when it becomes complicity with injustice. Poets invoke it to honor the often invisible labor of those who hold communities together through patient diplomacy, and to critique the way the demand for peace can silence those with legitimate grievances. The phrase thus raises essential questions about whose peace is being kept, at whose expense, and what the cost of harmony is to those required to purchase it through silence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem about the politics of family silence might use keep the peace to examine what is suppressed in the interest of domestic harmony — the grievance that is never named, the history that is never spoken, the person who keeps the peace at the cost of their own truth; In a political poem about diplomatic relations between nations with irreconcilable histories, keep the peace names the compromise that prevents open conflict while leaving the underlying wound unaddressed; A poem about the person who does the invisible emotional labor of keeping the peace in a community — who absorbs conflict, smooths misunderstanding, manages the various egos in their orbit — might honor this work while also asking what it costs; In a poem about racial reconciliation or transitional justice, keep the peace is examined as a phrase that has been used to ask the wronged to be silent about their wrongs — the peace being one that benefits those who would otherwise have to account for what they did; A poem about parenting siblings might describe the parent's exhausting, daily work of keeping the peace — and the question the poem raises about whether the enforced peace prepares the children for a world where conflict is unavoidable; The phrase suits poems that ask whose peace is being kept, who is required to suppress themselves in its maintenance, and whether a peace that requires perpetual self-suppression is worth the name
Additional Notes
This phrase describes active maintenance of harmony, not merely the absence of conflict. In poetry, a peacekeeper may be noble, weary, compromised, or silenced. It suits family, community, diplomatic, and inner psychological contexts. Related imagery includes folded hands, lowered voices, bridges, doves, thresholds, and the difficult art of preventing sparks from becoming fire.
Also Known As
Maintain harmony Prevent conflict
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