The Border Poem & Drawings

The poem describes a group of poor men in Veracruz who "put on a show for the rich"--John Gay's The Beggar's Opera -- a play which transforms into a procession of six thousand ailing men in 350 boats. They are "fired on by war parties of Indian stragglers, old hoboes and red-satin vamps in Dracula sweatshirts" and the air of desperation informs the audience that they are crossing the border. The "movie" of the second half describes a dying courtesan in Paris, who travels or has traveled to sublime places such as Peking, the Himalayas, Nepal, Mauna Loa, Tasmania and Victoria Falls, again to cross a border.