A young traveler to old Kathmandu
decided to get himself a tattoo
of a phrase in Sanskrit
that he thought was legit,
but it read, "Don't lick the wild ape canoe!"
arrayed in pairs,
mythical guardians
stand aside a stone staircase
the tourists seem
undissuaded by the figures -
be they freakish, grotesque,
or mean
the most dismaying of them
may be the ones with a
warm, polite
grin...
and a lion's body