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

ruff

Games
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

Ruff is an early English card game related to whist, involving the trumping of tricks and the collection of points.

Detailed Definition
Ruff appears in poetry as a precursor to more formal card games, symbolizing the act of trumping or overriding. In historical literature it evokes the lively play of early modern tables. Poets draw on its name and action to illustrate the sudden elevation of one force over another, linking the game to themes of dominance and the interruption of ordinary sequences.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ruff’s early trumping action appears in poems of sudden and decisive override; Historical verse uses the game for the moment when one suit is elevated above the rest; “He ruffed the lead and the direction of the hand was changed” illustrates forced interruption; Educational poetry shows the sport as a precursor to whist; Poets keep ruff when the ordinary sequence must be broken by a declared power.
Additional Notes
Ruff’s early trumping action turns the elevation of one suit into a sudden override of the ordinary sequence. The game’s historical relationship to whist allows poets to evoke an earlier stage of the trump-taking tradition. Teachers may place ruff among the ancestors of the later partnership games. Related forms include the various early English trump games. The image is effective when the ordinary must be broken by a declared and superior power.
Other Meanings of “ruff”
Also Known As
Ruff Play Trick Win Dominant Suit partlet
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