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



1497

Event dated 1497–1499

Sao Gabriel Carries Vasco da Gama to India

What happened

Vasco da Gama commanded Sao Gabriel when his fleet left Lisbon in 1497 and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The expedition reached Calicut on India's Malabar Coast in May 1498 before returning to Portugal. It opened a direct European sea route to India and accelerated Portuguese imperial expansion.

Literary impact

The voyage fulfilled the imperial and maritime vision celebrated by Luis de Camoes in Os Lusiadas, where da Gama narrates Portugal's history. The ship therefore became part of one of Europe's great sea epics, while postcolonial poets later revisited its legacy of commerce, violence and empire.

Source: Wikipedia

Poets alive in 1497

5 poets

More events in 1497

Skip to main content