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 U

Uroboros

Structure
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 circular poetic structure in which the final words or phrase loop back to the beginning, creating a self-contained, cyclical form.

Detailed Definition
Uroboros is a poetic symbol or structural motif derived from the ancient image of a serpent or dragon consuming its own tail, representing cyclicality, self-reflexivity, and the unity of beginning and end. In poetry, the uroboric form may manifest as a circular narrative, a palindrome-like structure, or a final line that echoes the first, creating a closed loop that resists linear progression. This motif appears in works exploring eternal recurrence, ecological cycles, or psychological introspection. For students, the uroboros illustrates how mythic symbols can shape poetic architecture, transforming the poem into a self-contained cosmos that embodies themes of regeneration, paradox, and wholeness through formal design.
Example
Example in poetry:
Uroboros: Poems that end where they begin, like circular form in Dylan Thomas’ "Do Not Go Gentle"; Contemporary: "Uroboros" by Anne Carson loops myth and memory; Layli Long Soldier’s "Whereas" begins and ends with treaty language; Symbol of self-consuming cycle in Sylvia Plath’s "Lady Lazarus"
Additional Notes
Snake eating own tail as symbol or structural metaphor. Circular or recursive poem structure. Related to crown of sonnets and ouroboric narrative.
Also Known As
Tail-biting serpent Self-consuming Circular serpent Eternal return
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