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Poetry

The Simulacrum Conceals, or Time Beguiles?

by Shivangi Mishra

On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, June the fifteenth, two thousand and twenty five,
I heard Jean Baudrillard say that the simulacrum is true. He spoke about the reality it mirrors.
Baudrillard’s voice echoed in a glass jar.
Thereafter, I saw a little girl purchase a three-dimensional world-globe at the tiniest book kiosk,
The globe much tinier than the kiosk,
And I soon realised why Baudrillard reckoned that the simulacrum precedes the truth,
At the kitchen garden, I saw a petite cat strut like a giant lion,
And I saw the drooping branches of a tree hush up the speeding raindrops,
About a month later, I seem to be reading Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities,
At some odd juncture in the Two Cities, Dickens quips, ‘Time beguiles’.
Perhaps Baudrillard was right all along:
the simulacrum never conceals reality,
Time does.
As I pen down the fragments of June, 2025, it’s still Sunday, June the fifteenth, two thousand and twenty five,
But maybe a month elapsed while reading The Tale of Two Cities,
or possibly, the incandescent magnificence of May has not yet eluded us,
Or maybe it isn’t time yet.

Shivangi Mishra is currently pursuing a doctorate in Copyright Law at the National Law University, Delhi. Her work features in several legal journals and literary magazines. Instagram: _shivangimishraa.