From Bone and Juice, the Crushed are Springing

I wrote the following words on the back, folded portion of a crossword puzzle mailed to me from a friend in Toronto - which was solved on the train from Shanghai to Beijing with my mother - while I was sitting on a bus driving into the Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, China, from which I boarded a plane and flew onto the Tibetan plateau:

They are swans that
swim in cesspools.
They farm land
between highway
overpasses,

and peddle cheap wares
in ancient bazaars.
They stack boxes in
obscure city zones
lost to all, unbroken;

battered, not crushed,
they work two jobs
but are registered
for none.
their children play naked

in nearby streams, that
cut countrysides like
snakes, and they smile
from storefronts, with
faces exuberant.

They sleep out front
of railway networks
and highway junctions,
working in travel,
families at home.

Skin tanned dark,
brown with work, sweat
and dirt. The paler
shades shun them -
they're afraid of work.

Dark maroon uniforms,
and morning rituals rear
the annoyance of the
sprawling service
classes.

Buildings loom heavy,
shadow over communities.
The red-shirted man,
gazes on, from a second
storey bus window.

Three cheers for China,
the China they're hiding.
Gleaming steel wrought,
from bone and juice, the
crushed are springing,

Up 88 storeys,
to house
sleaze and progress,
and Redress. But
it's still a mess.