A speaker slips into a cemetery on a misty winter morning, camera in hand, looking for the right angle to photograph the graves. The place is uneven and sloping, with marble tombs, plain cemented ones, crosses, and withered flowers. At first the speaker is a calm observer, treating the dead as a subject to be framed.
Then the tone turns. On a blank headstone, the speaker sees their own face. When they spin around, the dead have risen and are posing with crossed arms and legs, as if for a portrait. The gravediggers wait beside the speaker for the "final click," which suggests the speaker is the next one to be buried, and that the shutter will mark their death.
The mood begins quiet and still, then becomes eerie and darkly playful. The poem seems to say that whoever looks at death through a lens is already part of the picture. The speaker's shock is clear, though the closing lines are oddly calm.