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

Selinus

Historical Location
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

An ancient Greek city in western Sicily, known for its grand temples and destruction by Carthage in 409 BCE

Detailed Definition
Selinus (Selinunte) was a wealthy colony famed for its acropolis of Doric temples, later ruined in Punic wars. Its desolate ruins inspired Romantic travelers. In poetry, Selinus symbolizes the transience of architectural glory, the clash of civilizations, and the silence of abandoned sanctuaries—often serving as a meditation on how even the most pious cities can be erased by war and time.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pindar’s odes celebrate Selinus (Selinunte) as a prosperous city of athletic and artistic patronage; Greek tragedians reference Selinus as a site of civic piety and eventual destruction; Roman elegists depict Selinus’ ruins as a memento mori of Hellenic glory; Victorian poets describe Selinus’ temples as skeletal sentinels against the sea; Contemporary eco-poetry uses Selinus to reflect on seismic vulnerability and cultural erasure.
Additional Notes
Selinus (Selinunte), in western Sicily, was one of the richest Greek colonies, with eight grand temples dedicated to Olympian gods. Destroyed by Carthage in 409 BCE after a brutal siege, its ruins became a haunting symbol of civilizational fragility. In poetry, Selinus represents the hubris of architectural ambition, the clash of Mediterranean powers, and the aesthetic of ruin—especially in Romantic and archaeological verse contemplating time’s erasure.
Also Known As
Selinunte
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