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

Shrapnel

Military
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

Shrapnel refers to fragments scattered by an exploding shell or bomb, causing widespread injury across a wide area.

Detailed Definition
Shrapnel represents warfare's indiscriminate, fragmenting violence, a single explosion capable of wounding many at once across an unpredictable radius. Poets use shrapnel imagery to convey the randomness and horror of modern battlefield injuries, where survival often depended on chance positioning rather than skill or courage, the scattered, jagged nature of shrapnel wounds becoming a potent symbol for war's capacity to inflict suffering without discrimination or purpose.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem might describe shrapnel wounds scattered indiscriminately across a group of soldiers after a single explosion; Poets use "shrapnel" to convey the randomness and horror of modern battlefield injury; A verse could contrast shrapnel's jagged, unpredictable damage with the precision of a rifle shot; The term appears in poetry emphasizing survival's dependence on chance rather than skill or courage; A poem might depict a soldier's lingering pain from shrapnel embedded long after the battle ended; Historical war poetry sometimes uses shrapnel to symbolize war's capacity to wound without discrimination.
Additional Notes
Shrapnel refers to fragments scattered by an exploding shell or bomb, causing widespread injury across a wide area. Shrapnel is a primary wounding mechanism of modern warfare, turning a single explosive into hundreds of deadly projectiles. It causes injuries that are unpredictable and often severe. In poetry, shrapnel represents the random, chaotic nature of violence, the unseen killer that strikes without warning. Related terms include fragmentation, shell fragment, and debris. The term's origin is from Major Henry Shrapnel, who designed a shell that scattered lead balls. Shrapnel wounds are a grim reality of battlefield medicine, symbolizing the impersonal cruelty of war.
Also Known As
Fragments Splinters Shell Debris Fragmentation Scatter
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