Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel (Philip Larkin)

[tonyv]

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is --
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.

[Aleksandra]

Tony, I like how you are getting someones mood, in the case Larkin's mood :). I really love your reading taste.

 

Thanks for sharing this poem.

 

Aleksandra

[A. Baez]

Thank you for pointing me to this. It's always inspiring to see a traditional form handled competently by a contemporary. Interesting, the unrhymed third line (meant to half-rhyme with "reads" and "Leeds"?).