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



morris

Games
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

Morris, or nine men's morris, is a strategy board game where players place and move pieces to form mills and capture opponents.

Detailed Definition
Morris appears in pastoral and folk poetry as a rustic pastime linked to seasonal celebrations and village life. Shakespeare references the morris dance and game in festive contexts. Poets use it to evoke communal play, the formation of patterns that trap or liberate, and the circular rhythms of rural existence, connecting the board's alignments to cycles of nature and human gathering.
Example
Example in poetry:
Morris, or nine men’s morris, supplies poets with images of rural pattern and seasonal play; Traditional verse places the board among the pastimes of the village green; “They played morris until the mills of the evening were complete” illustrates communal strategy; Educational poetry shows the game as a living link to older alignment contests; Poets keep morris when the contest must feel both local and geometric.
Additional Notes
Morris, or nine men’s morris, turns the formation of three-in-a-row into a strategy of capture and control. The game’s rural and traditional associations allow poets to evoke the village green or the hearth. Classroom discussion can usefully examine the board’s geometry as a map of temporary alliance and permanent loss. Related alignment games include merels and the various mill games. The image works best when pattern itself becomes a form of power.
Also Known As
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