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

sliabh

Dialect
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

The Irish word for a mountain or high moorland, a majestic landscape term appearing throughout Irish poetry as an image of endurance, solitude, spiritual elevation, and the wild terrain beyond human settlement.

Detailed Definition
Sliabh (anglicised in placenames as slieve) describes the mountain or high open moorland that is one of the defining landscape features of Ireland's western and northern regions. In early Irish poetry, the mountain is a place of hermit retreat, of the wild man's exile, and of visionary experience at the boundary of the human world. In later verse it is the enduring feature of the landscape that outlasts human generations and carries the weight of ancestral attachment. The great mountains — Croagh Patrick, the Reek, the Mournes — are so charged with religious and literary association that to name a sliabh in poetry is to invoke this entire tradition of sacred high ground.
Example
Example in poetry:
The sliabh rises majestically above surrounding terrain; Poets climb sliabh seeking inspiration from elevated perspective; The sliabh provides defensive advantage in historical conflicts; Weather patterns around sliabh create dramatic atmospheric effects; The sliabh shelters unique ecosystems adapted to harsh conditions; Metaphorically, sliabh represents obstacles requiring perseverance to overcome.
Additional Notes
Sliabh (mountain) in Irish poetry is a majestic and imposing landscape feature, symbolizing grandeur, challenge, and permanence. It is associated with hardness, isolation, and spiritual elevation. Poets use sliabh imagery to convey awe, struggle, or transcendence. Climbing a sliabh is a metaphor for overcoming difficulties or gaining perspective. The sliabh is a site of weather extremes, reflecting the unpredictability of nature. It contrasts with the gentle cnoc, offering a more rugged and sublime aesthetic.
Also Known As
mountain peak high mountain slieve
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