Robert James Berry Pulau Pinang Tropical islands are like drowsy bullocks sunning in the sea but Pinang has no tail of land to swat mosquitoes, only furious jungle and the old poetry of stupefying quays. Perched on the clumsy colonial waterfront the mariners' temple grows from knots of joss-smoke, but no one god can contest the primal reek rising from the spilled insides of fish. Now that the ferry is a small dab of rust staining the strait upon which the sun speaks in a spiked hokkien tongue. A heron idles out of nowhere, white as a visitation, to pick its archangel wing on the boiling beach among the cracked skulls of sea coconuts, where allah sleeps in the arms of his sampan. At sunset the towers of Georgetown burn like ingots of fire, and the industrious cooking pots of the old quarter simmer as they have always done. Before mist soaps the bridge to the mainland I shall preserve an image. Behind foundered ships, a smooth russet moon is dipping in the silver mirror of the sea, like Nereid returned to the waves. Robert James Berry was born in Redhill, England in 1960, and was educated in the U.K., Ulster, and Scotland. Since 1991 he has lectured in English Literature and Language in England, New Zealand, and Malaysia. He currently lives and works in Selangor in West Malaysia.b