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 M

Magpie

Birds
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

A black-and-white corvid famed for its intelligence and association with omens.

Detailed Definition
The magpie’s duality—beautiful yet thieving, clever yet mischievous—makes it a rich symbol in poetry. Folklore often links it to superstition (“one for sorrow, two for joy”), while modern verse explores its role as a trickster or mirror of human contradictions. Poets use the magpie to examine memory, storytelling, and the ambiguity of signs, celebrating its adaptability in changing landscapes.
Example
Example in poetry:
In the nursery rhyme “One for Sorrow,” the magpie’s count predicts fate, showing its folkloric role as omen-bearer; Poets use the magpie’s black-and-white plumage to explore duality—truth and deception, joy and grief; In Ted Hughes’s work, the magpie is a clever survivor in changing landscapes; Modern verse celebrates the magpie’s intelligence and adaptability in urban environments; Its nest-building with shiny objects becomes a metaphor for memory collection or artistic assemblage.
Additional Notes
The magpie—black-and-white, intelligent, and vocal—is steeped in folklore (“One for sorrow, two for joy”) and symbolizes duality, curiosity, and storytelling. Its habit of collecting shiny objects makes it a metaphor for memory, hoarding, or artistic assemblage. Ted Hughes portrays it as a clever survivor. Related terms: “omen bird,” “corvid collector,” “trickster.” Students should explore its role in superstition and its rehabilitation in contemporary eco-poetry as a symbol of adaptability.
Also Known As
Eurasian Magpie Pica pica Black-and-white Magpie Pie
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