Can poetry be about ideas?

Can poetry be about ideas? Poetry was a potent medium for the Pre-Socratics, who I find fascinating. I'm delving into these poet/philosophers as well as the Roman poet Lucretius whose book long poem was inspired by the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles and Epicurius.

"Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles wrote in the traditional meter of Greek poetry [hexameters] and Heraclitus wrote in a prose deeply shaped by various poetical techniques."

(Cambridge Campanion to Early Greek Philosophy, 350)

Heraclitus as free verse? He has a great enigmatic style. Here's an example:

"Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living the death of the others and dying their life."

This is very dense, ambiguous and spooky...gives me a shiver to think that I am living some other being's (an immortal) death?

What do you think?

More about these wonderful early Greek philosophers later...Empedocles also has some great lines.

"The gods spoke through oracles, at Delphi and elsewhere, and in this period never did so except in poetic meters, almost always the very same poetic hexameters that characgterized epic poetry." (Cambridge Campanion..., 353)

I need to find some of these oracular writings...how to combine them with current culture and speech? Why do I find this so fascinating? Time to google