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 R

Rook

Birds
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

A social corvid that nests colonially in tall trees, often near farmland.

Detailed Definition
Rooks symbolize community, ancestral memory, and the rural soundscape in poetry. Their noisy rookeries evoke continuity and place-based identity. In British verse especially, they represent the changing countryside and the passage of time. Poets use rooks to reflect on belonging, the intelligence of corvids, and the layered histories embedded in familiar landscapes, often contrasting their communal life with human isolation or modern disconnection.
Example
Example in poetry:
In British rural poetry, the rook’s noisy colony (rookery) in tall trees symbolizes ancestral memory and the soundscape of the countryside; Poets use rooks to evoke the passage of time and the changing relationship between humans and farmland; In Ted Hughes’ “The Thought-Fox,” corvid intelligence appears, and rooks share this symbolic space of cunning and community; The rook’s bare face patch distinguishes it from crows, appearing in descriptive verse as a mark of identity; Ecopoets reference rookeries to discuss habitat loss and the quiet disappearance of traditional rural landmarks; The rook’s flight in swirling flocks at dusk inspires metaphors for collective movement and shared destiny.
Additional Notes
Rook: A social corvid related to crows, rooks nest colonially in “rookeries” and feature in British pastoral poetry (e.g., Tennyson). Symbolize communal intelligence, rural continuity, and sometimes foreboding. Their harsh calls and flocking behavior offer rich auditory and visual texture for landscape or mood poems.
Also Known As
Western Rook Eurasian Rook Crow (colloquially)
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