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 Q

Qalb

World Religion
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

The Arabic word for "heart," signifying in Sufism the spiritual center of the human being, the seat of intuition and divine knowledge.

Detailed Definition
In Islamic spirituality, the qalb is not the physical organ but the subtle spiritual heart that is the locus of faith, consciousness, and the soul's capacity to know God. It can be healthy or sick, asleep or awake. Sufi poets like Rumi use the imagery of the heart incessantly—as a mirror reflecting God, a vessel for love, a battlefield of passions, and the throne of the Divine. The purification and opening of the qalb is the ultimate goal of the mystic path.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Sufi poetry, Qalb (heart) is spiritual center: “Polish your Qalb—mirror for the Beloved’s face”; In Quranic verse, Qalb can harden or soften: “Stony hearts—Qalb turned to rock by arrogance”; In contemporary poetry, Qalb is intuition: “Ignore noise—Qalb knows the true path”; Poets describe Qalb as battlefield: “Desire and devotion—Qalb, where angels and demons meet.”
Additional Notes
Qalb in Sufism is not the physical heart but the spiritual center where divine love is known; it must be polished (like a mirror) to reflect truth; poets use qalb imagery to describe intuition, longing, and the wound of separation—often portraying the heart as a vessel cracked open to receive grace.
Also Known As
Heart (in Sufism)
Skip to main content