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 S

Sawm

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

Fasting during daylight hours in the Islamic month of Ramadan, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, involving abstinence from food, drink, and other physical needs.

Detailed Definition
Sawm is a profound spiritual discipline in Islam that cultivates self-restraint, empathy for the poor, and heightened God-consciousness (taqwa). Observed from dawn to sunset during Ramadan, it is more than physical abstinence—it includes guarding one’s speech, actions, and thoughts. In poetry, Sawm appears as a metaphor for inner purification, patience, and the soul’s hunger for divine closeness. Poets often juxtapose bodily deprivation with spiritual abundance, using imagery of thirst, dawn, and breaking fast to explore themes of longing, renewal, and communal solidarity.
Example
Example in poetry:
A Ramadan poem: “Ṣawm is not just fasting—it’s training the senses to seek the sacred”; In a modern verse, “My ṣawm includes social media—fasting from noise to hear my soul”; A minimalist lyric: “Ṣawm: restraint as revelation”; A student’s reflection: “Hunger teaches me empathy—this is ṣawm’s gift.”
Additional Notes
Sawm is the fasting practiced during the Islamic month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar calendar. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The fast entails complete abstinence from food, drink, smoking, and sexual relations from dawn (Fajr) until sunset (Maghrib). Beyond physical abstention, it is a time for intense spiritual reflection, increased prayer (Tarawih), and empathy for the poor. For poets, Sawm embodies themes of self-discipline, purification, patience (Sabr), and the transcendence of physical desires.
Also Known As
Siyam Fasting
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