When I Am Dead Poem by Zachary Zuccaro

When I am dead
and maggots have consumed my corpse.

When one hundred,
two hundred,
three hundred years have passed
and all memory of me has been erased,
who will care?

Who will care what I have done,
who I am,
who I was,
and who I will be?

Who will care
what I said,
what I believed,
what I thought?

No one.

No one will remember me
or anything about me.
No one will care about me
or love me.

So what is the sense?
Why should I, or anyone else
continue to live
if what we will be forgotten
just like our ancestors?

But I reply,
why does it matter
if you are loved or remembered?
Why does it matter
if anyone cares about you
or remembers what you have done?

Does that change who you are
and what you have done?

Even if the entire world
forgets you and what you have done,
nothing in the universe
can erase the least of your deeds.

When I am dead and gone,
perhaps no one will care about this poem,
and it is certain they will not care about me
yet that does not change that I am me
and that I have written this poem.

Why should I live?

To create create beauty,
to help others,
to make even one person happy.

Even if I myself do not matter,
creating a thing of beauty
will make my life worth living,
and if I do not create anything today,
I will create something tomorrow,
and I will continue to struggle
until I die.

Why should I care what others think
if I believe I have done something great,
and if I have done something great,
should I not continue to strive for greatness?
And if I have not yet done something great,
is that not even more reason to strive for greatness?

Disillusioned people
hurt and suffering,
will tell you that there is no God,
no reason to live,
that life is meaningless.
They embrace nihilism with open arms -
once we die we will be gone forever,
and we do not matter.
Life is not worth living,
and we should just die.

But I say that is a filthy lie.