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



Mandir

World Religion
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 Hindu temple, considered the earthly abode of a deity, designed as a microcosm of the universe and a place of worship.

Detailed Definition
Mandirs are sacred architecture—where spire (shikhara) meets sanctum (garbhagriha)—inviting devotees into divine presence. In poetry, temples appear as places of refuge, revelation, and community. Bhakti poets describe the joy of entering a mandir, seeing the deity adorned, and feeling grace descend. Poets use mandir imagery to symbolize the heart as God’s dwelling or the cosmos as a divine temple. They evoke beauty, order, and the meeting point of human aspiration and divine immanence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A devotional poem: “The mandir’s bell is not sound—it’s the heartbeat of the neighborhood”; In a diasporic verse, “Our mandir in Queens smells of jasmine and subway rain”; A minimalist reflection: “Mandir: not building, but belonging”; A modern lyric: “I don’t enter to escape the world—but to remember it’s sacred.”
Additional Notes
A Mandir is a Hindu temple designed as a cosmic map (mandala) and the dwelling place of the deity. The innermost sanctum (garbhagriha or "womb-house") houses the main idol (murti), which is ritually awakened. Temple architecture, with its towering shikharas (spires) and intricate sculptures, guides the devotee from the outer world of illusion (Maya) to the inner world of divine consciousness.
Also Known As
Temple Devasthanam Mandiram
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