What Are Poets For?

Should anyone ever ask you why there is so much wine imagery in the poetry of Islamic piety, tell them this:

Poets are the mortals who, singing earnestly of the wine-god, sense the trace of the fugitive gods, stay on the gods' tracks, and so trace for their kindred mortals the way toward the turning.

--Martin Heidegger, "What Are Poets For?" tr. Albert Hofstadter.