With a poem you can say 'I got my feeling into words for myself. I now have the equivalent in words for that much of what I have felt.'

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.

not fare well, but fare forward

For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.

He is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon.

What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.