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 T

Tongues

World Religion
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 phenomenon of ecstatic, unintelligible speech, or the miraculous ability to speak foreign languages, as in the Pentecost event.

Detailed Definition
"Speaking in tongues" (glossolalia) is described in the New Testament as a sign of the Holy Spirit's descent. It represents a direct, transcendent form of communication with God that bypasses the rational mind. In poetry, "tongues" can symbolize the ineffable, the breakdown of ordinary language in the face of divine experience, or the unifying power of the spirit that overcomes the confusion of Babel. It is an image of pure, ecstatic utterance, where the soul speaks in a language known only to God.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Pentecostal poetry, Tongues are Spirit’s fire: “Flames on heads—Tongues praising God in unknown grace”; In Rumi’s verse, Tongues dissolve in love: “Lover and Beloved—Tongues merge into one breath”; In contemporary poetry, Tongues are cultural: “Mother’s lullaby in Urdu—Tongues as homeland”; Poets caution Tongues without love: “Babel’s curse—Tongues that divide, not unite.”
Additional Notes
“Tongues” (glossolalia) refers to ecstatic speech in early Christian communities (Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 12–14), seen as a gift of the Holy Spirit; it also recalls the miraculous understanding of foreign languages at Pentecost; poets may use tongues to explore themes of divine communication beyond rational language, the fragmentation of human speech (Babel), or the yearning for a primal, unified sacred utterance.
Also Known As
Glossolalia Gift of Tongues
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