The poem opens with a question that returns at the end: what were those lights in the sky? The speaker and a companion are coming back from a place they were never meant to visit, and the red and blue dots overhead suggest something unexplained, maybe even alarming. Then the speaker realizes they were being followed, and that a creature was pacing in the woods nearby. The broken, stretched-out "back and forth" on the page makes that pacing feel restless and slow.
The poem then shifts to "you," someone who refuses to live by the clock or follow the crowd. The pendulum image ties time and routine to a threat at the throat. The line "Hell was other people" echoes a famous phrase, and here it points to conformity and complacency, which "you" would rather damn than join.
The mood is uneasy and paranoid, with a note of defiance. The closing question suggests the speaker feels hunted, and perhaps that escape was never complete.