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

Steek

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

To close or shut firmly; to fasten securely, as in closing a door or a wound.

Detailed Definition
"Steek" is a practical, final word for the act of closing something firmly and completely — the door steeked against the night, the wound steeked against further harm. Its hard consonants give it a decisive quality, and in poetry it appears in contexts of protection, exclusion, and the conclusive ending of things. In domestic and narrative verse "steek" signals the closing off of one state or space and the beginning of another, and it carries the weight of finality and security that comes with truly closing something against the outside world.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Steek" means to shut, close, or fasten tightly; A poet might write: "Steek the door against the gale, / let the night outside prevail." for a domestic shelter poem; "She steeked her heart when he came back — / nae second entrance through the crack." uses the word for emotional closure; "Steek your lips and hold your word — / sometimes silence is best heard." counsels restraint; "The shed was steeked against the storm — / inside, the animals kept warm." creates a pastoral scene of protection; "He steeked his case and walked away — / the argument done for that day." uses the word to signal resolution
Additional Notes
Steek has a satisfying finality to it — the firm click of a closed door, the last stitch that closes a wound, the decisive act of shutting out. In verse it appears both literally (closing doors, gates, eyes) and figuratively (shutting out feeling, shutting down conversation). The imagery of "steeking" eyes in death is particularly resonant in elegy. It also appears in the phrase "steek your gab" (shut your mouth), where its firmness becomes comic command. For students, "steek" is a useful example of how a simple action verb in Scots can carry great emotional range, from the peaceful closure of sleep to the violence of silencing and the finality of death.
Also Known As
Shut Close Fasten
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