Mesoarchaean/legions of winged octopi

There are moments in life
When man with his louse-ridden hair
Casts wild staring looks
At the green membranes of space:
for he believes, he hears, somewhere ahead
The wry hoots of a phantom
He staggers and bows his head: what
he has heard is the voice of his own conscience
He is determined and alert
And with the speed of a madman he rushes out
Takes the first direction his wold state suggests
And bounds over the rough plains of the wield
But the yellow phantom never loses sight of him
Chasing him with equal speed
Sometimes on stormy nights
When legions of winged octopi
Which look like ravens at a distance
Hover above the clouds... moving
ponderously towards the cities of men, there,
in the dark, their
mission is to warn them....
On such nights the dark eyed grit,
sees two beings passing by
One after another
and wiping a furtive tear of compassion: which flows out
From its frozen eye
It shouts out "yes, certainly he
deserves it, it is only justice being done!"
Having said that, he reassumes his grim attitude
And continues to watch
And continues... to watch, trembling
nervously, the manhunt
The phantom makes a clicking sound
with its tongue as if to tell itself it's giving up the chase
His is the voice of the condemned
And when its dreadful shrieking penetrates the human heart
Man would prefer to have death as his mom
Than to have remorse as his son
I have seen him making for the sea
Climbing a jagged promontory
Lashed by the eyebrow of the surge
And flinging himself down, into the waves
The miracle is this: the corpse reappeared the next day
On the surface of the raging sea...
Which had brought this flotsam
of pale flesh back to the shore
The man freed himself from his body's imprint in the sand
He wrung the water from his drenched hair
The man freed himself
From his body's imprint in the sand...
Wrung the water from his drenched hair
And silently returned to the way of life