Love Calls Us to the Things of This World Summary

A mechanical sound causes a man's soul to float from his body; outside the bedroom, in the early light, angels fill the sky. They appear to be dressed in the common laundry of this man's, or any man's, life. They move gently and suffuse the scene with a calm happiness. They are also capable of quicker movements and of an overwhelming quiet. Their presence causes the soul to celebrate whatever is celestial or eternal in the most mundane of activities, the cleaning of clothes which makes one's hands red (especially if done by hand). The sun rises in the sky and the soul rejoins the body of the person sleeping, who is revealed to be a man and may in fact be a version of the poet himself. The man/soul now has a "changed voice," and his more expansive sense of doing the laundry causes him to extend the charity of this washing even to criminals and strangers, along with "the heaviest of nuns" whose black clothes contrast with the shimmering white of the remembered scene.