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

Put paid to

Idiomatic Phrase
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

To end, finish, or put a stop to something definitively; British expression suggesting completion or termination, often implying finality that prevents further development or continuation.

Detailed Definition
Put paid to means to end, destroy, settle, or bring a decisive stop to something. In poetry, the idiom can describe how a revelation puts paid to innocence, a death to hope, a storm to harvest, or a fact to fantasy. Its accounting origin gives finality a transactional tone, as though a debt has been settled and no further argument remains. A poet may use it for abrupt closure, irony, or fatal consequence. It is especially effective when one event cancels a whole imagined future.
Example
Example in poetry:
A war poem might say the sudden frost put paid to the army's march; In a love poem, one careless lie puts paid to years of trust; The phrase means to end, ruin, or make impossible; A poet can use it for abrupt finality.
Additional Notes
Put paid to means finish, end, or destroy the possibility of something. It is especially common in British English and has a crisp finality. In poetry, it can describe a storm ending a picnic, illness ending ambition, truth ending illusion, or death ending plans. The phrase has a faintly commercial feel, as though an account has been settled. Students should notice how finality can arrive in plain, almost bureaucratic language.
Also Known As
end
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