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

Murasaki Shikibu

Historical Figure
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

Japanese court writer, author of The Tale of Genji, often regarded as one of the world’s earliest novelists.

Detailed Definition
Murasaki Shikibu evokes the refined world of the Heian court, where poetry, feeling, rank, and fleeting beauty shaped social life. Her writing is deeply attentive to longing, impermanence, elegance, and the emotional codes of aristocratic culture. In poetry, her name can suggest subtle feeling, courtly melancholy, feminine literary authority, and the delicate art of expressing what cannot be openly spoken.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet might invoke Murasaki Shikibu to suggest courtly subtlety, psychological depth, and refined longing; The Tale of Genji can inspire poems about beauty, transience, and emotional concealment; Murasaki’s name may stand for women’s literary brilliance in a world of screens and rituals; A poem could use her as a guide to the hidden weather of the heart
Additional Notes
Murasaki Shikibu is central to literary history as the author of The Tale of Genji, a courtly masterpiece of psychological subtlety, seasonal beauty, and impermanence. Poets may invoke her to suggest refined perception, hidden feeling, women’s writing, and the emotional codes of Heian Japan. Her world is one of sleeves, letters, moonlight, rank, longing, and the passing of beauty.
Also Known As
Lady Murasaki Murasaki no Shikibu
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