The speaker steps out of the glaring sun into a dark, cold bar, and the poem is about what that retreat offers. Nobody looks at you closely here. The waiters are polite but distant, the faces are shadowed, and the speaker finds relief in being anonymous. "How I love this place!" sounds happy, but the lines around it undercut it: his soul is "frozen" like the ice in his glass, and his dreams fizzle out like the bubbles in his drink.
The other men sit alone or in groups, brooding and staring into space. The speaker compares them to refugees in a transit camp, people stuck between one life and the next. Even the fish in the wall tank swim listlessly, as if they too are just passing time. The mood is quiet, numb and a little sad. The final line calls the bar a "comforting" asylum, but the oblivion it offers is only "transient." The speaker seems to know the escape won't last, and that makes the comfort feel hollow.