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 O

Onan

Biblical
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

Son of Judah who refused levirate duty and was slain by God for spilling seed

Detailed Definition
Onan, ordered to father children for his dead brother Er, withdrew to avoid inheritance obligations and was punished (Genesis 38:8–10). His act gave rise to the term “onanism.” In poetry, Onan symbolizes selfishness, the perversion of duty, and the sacredness of lineage—often invoked as a caution against using intimacy for evasion, representing moral failure masked as compliance.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Genesis 38:8–10, Onan’s refusal to fulfill levirate duty inspires moral poetry about responsibility; 18th-century verse depicts Onan’s death as divine judgment on selfishness; Contemporary poems reinterpret Onan’s story beyond traditional readings of contraception; In poems about covenant care, Onan’s action breaks familial obligation; Some liturgical laments contrast Onan’s death with Judah’s eventual repentance; Educational poems cite Onan to teach about ancient marriage customs.
Additional Notes
Onan, son of Judah, is known for “spilling his seed” to avoid levirate duty (Genesis 38); his story is often misread as condemning contraception, but context shows his sin was refusing familial responsibility; poets may use Onan to explore duty, deception, or the ethics of lineage and inheritance.
Also Known As
Onan son of Judah Onan the Disobedient
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