Thinking about poetry is not the same as poetic thought, but such "thinking about" would certainly busy itself in a void if it cut itself loose entirely from its subject matter's imaginative intellection; and it is the alpha and omega of Heidegger's philosophy that poetry is thought, just as true thought—that is, thought concerned with the meaning of Being—partakes of the essence of poetry. Yes, the alpha too, although it is only in his writings after Being and Time that poetry, above all Hölderlin's, assumes the role of Being's authentic and most "thoughtful" messenger…. Heidegger says in the essay "Why be a Poet?," "that the making of poetry … is a matter of thinking." For the domain of poetry is language, and even in Being and Time it is said of discourse in language that it is "existentially equiprimordial with understanding": "If we have not heard...