The poem is told in the close third person, from the perspective of the war photographer. He is in a darkroom, a special room used by photographers to develop black-and-white pictures from their original negatives. He stands in front of “ordered rows” of film developing in trays filled with chemical mixtures. The room is glowing with red light, which can be used to illuminate a photographer’s workspace without damaging the developing pictures.
As he works, the photographer mentally compares himself to a priest giving a Mass. His hands tremble as he reflects on the horrors of war, even though they stayed steady while he was taking the photographs themselves. Watching the pictures develop gives him flashbacks to the trauma of the war scene where he took the images. He thinks about how some photographs will be selected by his editor and published in the newspaper, but that it is impossible to convey the full horror of war to the civilian readership through still pictures.
