Railway Station, The Days of the 25th
The trains of wounded arrive almost always at dawn, the late autumn dawn.
The lamps of the station are still burning, but grow pale.
Beyond the open platform, across the tracks, you can see that dawn has come to the sky, behind the mountains.
There is a star in the midst of the dawn, Hesper, star of both the twilights, very big and bright and near, like a lamp.
It is very cold.
In the pale light of the dawn and the pale light of the station lamps they wait for the train of wounded to come in.
The Red Cross has a cantine at the station in what used to be the buffet. But these men will be past need of coffee and soup.
The cart of the buffet, that used to be pushed along the trains with breakfasts under the carriage windows, is heaped now, in these days, with very strange things. There is need of these things, always. There is this, and that, that cannot wait.