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

Specter

Supernatural
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

A frightening or unsettling ghostly figure. It can also mean a looming fear that seems to haunt the present.

Detailed Definition
A specter is a ghost or ominous apparition, often marked by dread rather than consolation. In poetry, it may walk through literal ruins or become a metaphor for a historical terror that remains unresolved. War, famine, betrayal, and inherited violence can all appear as specters haunting a speaker or community. The term carries both visual force and abstraction, allowing the unseen pressure of the past to take on a face, gesture, or cold presence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A specter is a frightening or persistent ghostly presence, often used metaphorically for an inescapable fear.; Karl Marx’s famous opening image of “a specter” haunting Europe shows how the word can make an idea seem powerful and pervasive.; A poet may write, “The specter of famine walked beside each full grocery cart,” to show a historical trauma lingering in the present.; In a personal poem, a specter can represent regret: “Her unanswered letter became a specter at my desk.”
Additional Notes
A specter often names both a ghost and an abstract dread, as in “the specter of war.” This double meaning helps poets make social fears feel hauntingly present.
Also Known As
Spectre Ghost Phantom Eidolon ghaist taidhbhse The Ghost The Wraith
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