Wholly Foul

In life there is not time to grieve long.
But this, this is out of life, this is out of time,
An instant eternity of evil and wrong.
We are soiled by a filth that we cannot clean, united to supernatural vermin,
It is not we alone, it is not the house, it is not the city that is defiled,
But the world that is wholly foul.

Eliot, T.S. "Murder in the Cathedral" from The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1980, 214.