A poet is not a composer: a poet is a visionary. He doesn't compose, the poetry happens to him in certain moments - those moments are of meditation. In fact, when the poet is not, then the poetry happens. When the poet is completely absent, suddenly he is filled with something unknown, unasked for; suddenly something of the unknown has entered into him, a fresh breeze has come into his house. Now he has to translate this fresh breeze into language - he is not a composer, he is a translator. A poet is a translator: something happens inside his being and he translates it into language, into words. Something wordless stirs within. It is more like a feeling, and less like a thought. It is less in the head, and more in the heart.
A poet is very courageous. To live with the heart takes the deepest courage. The word 'courage' is very interesting. It comes from a Latin root COR, which means the heart. Cor means the heart - so to be courageous means to live with the heart. And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they created a security of logic around them; fearful, they close every window and door with theology, concepts, words, theories - and inside them they hide.
The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown; it is leaving the past and allowing the future to be. Courage is to move on dangerous paths: life is dangerous and only cowards can avoid the danger. But then, they are already dead. A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown. There is danger there, but he will take the risk. The heart is always ready to take the risk, the heart is a gambler, the head is a businessman. The head always calculates - it is cunning. The heart is non-calculating.
This English word 'courage' is beautiful, very interesting. To live through the heart is the meaning: a poet lives through the heart. And, by and by, in the heart he starts listening to the sounds of the unknown.

-Osho-