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 L

Leontini

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

An ancient Greek city in eastern Sicily, known for its fertile lands and as the home of the sophist Gorgias

Detailed Definition
Leontini was a Chalcidian colony that frequently sought Athenian aid against Syracuse, contributing to the Sicilian Expedition. In poetry, Leontini symbolizes intellectual refinement amid political vulnerability, the voice of rhetoric in a world of force, and the tragic entanglement of small states in great power conflicts—often appearing as a place where eloquence could not prevent ruin, embodying the limits of persuasion in the face of ambition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pindar’s fragments praise Leontini as a Sicilian city of wisdom and eloquence; Cicero references Leontini in speeches later echoed in civic poetry as a model of republican virtue; Roman poets note Leontini’s fertile plains as a symbol of Sicilian abundance; Victorian historical verse depicts Leontini as a casualty of imperial ambition; Modern Sicilian poets use Leontini to explore the erosion of local autonomy.
Additional Notes
Leontini, in eastern Sicily, was famed for its fertile plains and as the home of Gorgias, the sophist who brought rhetorical innovation to Athens. Though politically unstable, it was a cultural bridge between Sicily and mainland Greece. In poetic contexts, Leontini may represent the spread of intellectual currents, the tension between local identity and panhellenic culture, or the vulnerability of artistic centers in times of war—especially during the Athenian expedition to Sicily (415 BCE).
Also Known As
Leontinoi
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