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

Syracuse

Historical Location
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 powerful Greek colony in Sicily, famed for its tyrants, Archimedes, and resistance to Athens and Carthage

Detailed Definition
Syracuse was one of the greatest cities of Magna Graecia, a center of science, drama, and military power. Its fall to Rome marked the end of Greek Sicily. In poetry, Syracuse evokes Hellenic brilliance in the West, tragic ambition (as in Athenian hubris during the Sicilian Expedition), and the meeting of Greek, Carthaginian, and Roman worlds—often symbolizing the vulnerability of even the mightiest cities to time and conquest.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pindar’s odes honor Syracuse as a beacon of Greek culture and athletic triumph; Theocritus, a Syracusan, infuses his Idylls with its landscapes and dialect; Cicero’s speeches against Verres, echoed in civic poetry, depict Syracuse’s plundered art; Romantic poets like Shelley visit Syracuse to commune with classical ghosts; Modern Sicilian verse uses Syracuse to explore the tension between monumentality and decay.
Additional Notes
Syracuse, on Sicily’s east coast, was a dominant Greek polis—rivaling Athens in power and culture. Home to Archimedes, Theocritus, and tyrants like Dionysius I, it resisted Athenian invasion (415–413 BCE) and later Carthaginian and Roman sieges. In poetry, Syracuse symbolizes intellectual brilliance, autocratic splendor, and the tragic arc of imperial cities. Its Latomia (stone quarries) served as prisons, adding themes of confinement and silenced voices.
Also Known As
Syrakousai
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