Peter John Dean's "The Followers" opens with a question about strange hooded figures, and the rest of the poem slowly answers it. They seem to stand for time, or perhaps death or fate, though the poem never names them. The speaker says they appeared at his birth, quietly, "like whispers," while his mother wept. Since then they have "eaten" his years without being noticed, and now they are so tall that he can't see past them.
The speaker feels trapped and resigned. The figures are blind, mute and without feeling, so there is no one to plead with. They wouldn't be cruel if they let him go, and they wouldn't be sorry if they didn't. The image of a tightening iron band makes life seem like a slow squeeze.
The mood is cold, hushed and fatalistic. The steady rhymes and the final line, "Unaware of fate, they are my fate," close the poem like a lock clicking shut.