Sleeping masters roused to burning homes from beds. 
Steeping toddlers plucked from their watery deaths: ribbons, plaques and soft-soap are the ephemeral rewards paid to the slaves whose selfless acts accord a higher value to their masters, while parting gifts (bolt pistols) console the rest. 
The remainder. Too bad the tributes paid to lives that relegate these thrones to lives spent valuing [bad word] up, are known to be neither fleeting nor desirable. 
But nothing surprises me these days. I just sit and watch the box-cars roll by and wait. Patient. Unattended. 
package under a terminal bench. 
short fuse to scatter steady hands if I forget to remember that better lives have been lived in the margins, locked in the prisons and lost on the gallows than have ever been enshrined in palaces. 
[whispered:] 
It's not your fault, there's nothing we can do, it's just the way it is, there's nothing we can do.