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

Mass

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

The central act of worship in many Christian traditions, commemorating Jesus Christ's Last Supper with his disciples.

Detailed Definition
In Catholicism and other Christian denominations, the Mass (or Eucharist) is the ritual re-enactment of Christ's sacrifice, involving the consecration of bread and wine. Its deeply symbolic and structured liturgy, rich with ritual, chant, and scripture, provides a wealth of imagery for poetry. Poets may reference the Mass to evoke themes of sacrifice, communion, transubstantiation (the mystery of bread and wine becoming body and blood), forgiveness, and the seeking of grace. It serves as a backdrop for exploring devotion, doubt, and the human desire for a tangible connection with the divine.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Catholic liturgical poetry, the Mass is cosmic sacrifice: “Bread becomes Body—Mass unites heaven and earth”; In George Herbert’s “The Altar,” the Mass inspires personal devotion: “A heart alone is such a stone / As nothing but Thy power doth cut”; In contemporary verse, Mass becomes communal memory: “Grandmother’s rosary, Latin hymns—Mass echoes in my bones”; Poets use Mass to explore presence: “At the elevation, time stops—Mass holds the universe in a wafer.”
Additional Notes
The Mass (from Latin missa, “dismissal”) centers on the Eucharist as both memorial and real presence; its structure—Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist—mirrors a sacred narrative arc; poets draw on its ritual cadence, sensory richness (incense, chant, bread), and theological paradoxes (death as life, absence as presence) to explore mystery, community, and embodied divinity.
Also Known As
Eucharist Holy Mass Liturgy of the Eucharist hunk
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