Wednesday 11 November 2015

More Larkin about


Another sign on the via dolorosa that is the Larkin Trail, this on the doorway of the Royal Station Hotel


You are dying to read the poem he composed to the Royal Station Hotel aren't you? Oh yes you are ...

Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel

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.


2 comments:

  1. I've stayed in that hotel. Apart from the ashtrays, very little has changed since Larkin wrote it.

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