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.

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

Turn the other cheek

Idiomatic Phrase
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

An idiom advocating non-retaliation and passive resistance in the face of aggression, originating from biblical teachings to suggest moral superiority through forgiveness rather than reciprocal violence.

Detailed Definition
Turn the other cheek means to respond to insult, injury, or aggression with patience, forgiveness, or non-retaliation. The idiom has biblical origins and carries strong ethical, spiritual, and political resonance. In poetry, it can appear in devotional verse, protest poetry, family conflict, or moral debate. A poet may honour it as radical mercy or question its burden when demanded of the vulnerable. The phrase is useful for exploring forgiveness, humility, non-violence, and the limits of endurance.
Example
Example in poetry:
A Christian moral poem might praise the saint who turns the other cheek instead of answering insult with insult; In a modern peace poem, turning the other cheek can be shown as strength rather than weakness; The phrase means to respond to injury with patience or forgiveness; A poet can use it to explore mercy, pride, and restraint.
Additional Notes
Turn the other cheek comes from Christian teaching and means respond to injury without retaliation. In poetry, it can support themes of mercy, pacifism, humility, spiritual strength, or moral difficulty. Students should ask whether the phrase represents noble forgiveness, dangerous passivity, or social pressure placed on the injured person. It pairs well with blows, faces, silence, saints, enemies, and poems that test the limits of non-violence.
Also Known As
forgive
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