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 P

Pergamon

Historical Location
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

An ancient city in Mysia, capital of the Attalid kingdom and famed for its library and altar

Detailed Definition
Pergamon rose to prominence as a Hellenistic cultural center, rivaling Alexandria with its library and monumental Great Altar. In poetry, it symbolizes intellectual ambition, artistic patronage, and the synthesis of Greek and Near Eastern power. Its acropolis inspired visions of sublime architecture; later, its medical sanctuary of Asclepius added layers of healing and prophecy—making it a rich symbol in verses on knowledge, art, and divine-human collaboration.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pergamon; In Strabo, Pergamon is the hilltop city where the library rivaled Alexandria, and the altar of Zeus rose like a prayer to the heavens; Pergamon; A 17th-century lyric reads, “Pergamon—where the scrolls held the wisdom of the world, and the altar bore the weight of human longing”; Pergamon; In a modern poem, “Pergamon: the place where knowledge was carved in stone, and the soul was carved in parchment”; Pergamon; A student poem writes: “I climbed Pergamon’s stair—and the wind turned the pages of a book I could not read”; Pergamon; The poet writes, “Pergamon teaches: the greatest monuments are not of stone, but of thought, preserved against time”; Pergamon; “They call it Pergamon, but I call it the library the earth built with its own hands.”
Additional Notes
Pergamon, with its library and altar, is a poetic symbol of Hellenistic intellectual and artistic ambition; its mention evokes the triumph of culture over conquest, making it ideal for meditations on knowledge as resistance, the preservation of texts, and the quiet endurance of learning amid political collapse
Also Known As
Pergamum Attalia
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