Unless your solipsism proves correct,
You will remain in someone’s memory
For a while, and in the end, your remains
Will consist of what surviving humans think
Of you, so long as they think of you. Mozart
Did not become music when he died,
He became what people made of his notes,
As Yeats became his admirers, as you will
Become whatever living others make of you,
Whether you left them something or not.
Opinion is the last of us, not the least of us,
However much we try to shrug it off in order
To be able to carry on. And when no one
Is left who has any opinion of you, no idea
Of what you were or tried to do or did,
That’s the outer death, the one you’ll get
Unless your solipsism proves correct.
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