Culture

The Proof

By Richard Wilbur
Saved Stories
Also by Richard Wilbur:
She (1958)*
A Black Birch in Winter (1974)
C Minor (1974)*
A Shallot (1975)
For W. H. Auden (1979)
Bone Key (1995)*
The Disappearing Alphabet (1997)*
Sir David Brewster’s Toy (2002)*
Some Words Inside of Words (2004)*
*with audio of Richard Wilbur reading the poem
Interview:
A Certain Logic: an interview with Richard Wilbur
by Peter Davison (Sept. 9, 1999)

Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused his work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all his grammar,

I love him that he did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,

But thinking I might come to please him yet,
Crossed out delete and wrote his patient stet.

Copyright © 1963 by Richard Wilbur.
The Atlantic Monthly; March 1964; The Proof; Volume 213, No. 3; 62.