At one in the morning, March cold and raw,
Through Italy’s mountains a freight train clawed.
Young Michelle Paulo held brake and chain,
In the last lone car of the climbing train.
Snow mixed with rain on the iron spine,
Slick were the tracks in that steep incline.
The engine coughed with its coal so weak,
War stole the good—left ash and creak.
Five hundred souls lay hidden from sight,
On roofs and railcars, clinging to flight.
Fleeing the fire of a world at war,
They weighed down the train like a ghostly oar.
Michelle knew danger rode the grade,
One slip, one stall, and the climb would fade.
Backslide meant death on a mountain so steep—
His hand stayed tense in a sleepless keep.
Ahead shone hope in a tunnel’s throat,
Dry rails promised a climbing note.
“Get us inside,” his thoughts all cried,
“For momentum lives where storms can’t hide.”
The engine groaned, the wheels complained,
But inch by inch the tunnel was gained.
Speed picked up as the rails went dry—
Then stumbled… faltered… began to die.
At last it stopped with a shuddered moan,
Ninety-nine cars inside of stone.
Only Michelle, in the open air,
Stood with his caboose in the freezing stare.
No whistle blew from the lead up front,
No order came—no signal, no grunt.
Just silence thick as the tunnel’s breath,
A stillness humming the tune of death.
Against his training, against the rule,
He followed the chill of a gut-born pull.
Leaving the brakes, he stepped inside,
Into shadow where hundreds slept intertwined.
Flashlight dark, he walked the aisle,
Past whispered breaths and restless trial.
Then came the thump from the tunnel wall—
A heavy, hollow, repeating call.
Car to car the echo grew,
No movement stirred, no whispers flew.
At last he shone his trembling light,
Across the faces locked in night.
What he saw sent fear like flame—
The beam fell dead on eyes drained of name.
No breath, no stir, no rising chest,
Five hundred souls in poisoned rest.
The coal up front had been shoveled deep,
To wake the engine from failing sleep.
But cheap black fuel fed toxic breath,
And flooded the tunnel with silent death.
Carbon’s ghost in invisible tide
Slipped through every door and hide.
Men, women, children—down they fell,
Without a cry, without farewell.
The thumping sounds that shook the stone
Were bodies tumbling, bone on bone—
Rolling from railcars, one by one,
After their final breath was done.
Michelle ran out to the freezing dark,
The lone spared soul from death’s vast mark.
Six hundred aboard when night began—
Five hundred twenty-one never ran.
And still that mountain keeps their cry,
In rusted rails and frozen sky.
A train that climbed with hope inside,
Was swallowed whole by gas and tide.