Light spreads darkly downwards from the high <br />Clusters of lights over empty chairs <br />That face each other, coloured differently. <br />Through open doors, the dining-room declares <br />A larger loneliness of knives and glass <br />And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads <br />An unsold evening paper. Hours pass, <br />And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds, <br />Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room. <br /> <br />In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How <br />Isolated, like a fort, it is - <br />The headed paper, made for writing home <br />(If home existed) letters of exile: Now <br />Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.<br /><br />Philip Larkin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/friday-night-at-the-royal-station-hotel-2/
