On the dreamy river,

drifting with the tide,

past old shutter’d houses

where history lives inside.

Breezes tease the palms,

stir a lazy frond or two,

and in the milky sky

the heat is shining through.

The Portuguese and Dutch,

the British all were here;

five hundred years of stories

like magic can appear.

An old kampong by the Melaka River, Malaysia. Photo by Ginette Pestana