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

Skira

Historical Festival
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

Athenian festival honoring Demeter and Athena, featuring women's secret rites and the procession from Athens to Skiron

Detailed Definition
The Skira was celebrated on the twelfth of Skirophorion with a procession from Athens to Skiron, where Athena, Demeter, and other deities were honored. Women performed secret rites while men feasted separately. The festival involved the retrieval of sacrificial remains from underground chambers. Its mysteries remain partly obscure. In poetry, Skira represents feminine religious authority, agricultural mysteries, and summer heat rituals, appearing in works exploring women's exclusive ceremonies, the Thesmophoric cycle, secret knowledge, and the Greek practice of gender-separated worship that allowed women autonomous religious spaces outside male observation and control.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Skira festival honoring Demeter and Kore appears in summer poetry; Ancient poets describe women's rites and parasol processions in heat; "At Skira, maidens walk beneath white shade to honor grain's daughters" shows usage; The festival provides material for verses on female mystery and agricultural cycle; Greek lyrics employ Skirian imagery for themes of harvest completion and women's separation; Contemporary verse uses the term for exploring gender-specific ritual and seasonal culmination
Additional Notes
Skira honored Demeter and Athena with women's secret rites and processions from Athens to Skiron. The festival's mystery elements and women's exclusive participation emphasize female religious authority and the connection between agricultural and feminine divine power. Understanding Skira helps contextualize Demeter worship beyond Eleusis and the religious spaces created for women's autonomous ritual activity. The festival's secrecy and gender restriction demonstrate Greek religious practices that excluded men from certain observances, creating female-controlled sacred spaces.
Also Known As
Skiraphoria Athenian Skira Athenian Skirophoria
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