The Mirror of Time !

I saw an old man, so slow with a stick,
Wrinkles told a story, one I couldn’t pick.
I was just a child, too small to see,
But I longed to follow, to know what he'd be.

It appeared to me he came from far,
Full of fatigue, why he had those scars?
I wonder why no one was with him,
His eyes were white, full of memories dim.

He looked at me with a blurry hope,
But slipped away in the unknown smoke.
I cried and cried, but he never replied,
Why he came, why was he tried?

I saw him disappear, lost in the mist,
And realized I too was caught in time's twist.
I wished to go back where it began,
Childhood days, Ah! me young man.

But the road I walked was never mine to pick,
It led me too far, with clock's every tick.
In despair, I looked into the mirror one day,
And saw the old man staring back my way.

- Ayaan

Ayaan Siddiqui

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AyaanSiddiquiOfficial

Reflection - The Mirror of Time

In The Mirror of Time, I tried to capture the feeling of looking at life from the eyes of a kid, full of curiosity but not really understanding what’s going on around him. I started with "I saw an old man, so slow with a stick," imagining a child who didn’t know much about aging or what it meant to grow old. His wrinkles and scars were just mysteries the newbie couldn’t figure out. He was fascinated and wished to know more about 'The Old Man', who looked very different from him. You would have felt this emotion in the words "who was he and where did he come from?"

As the poem goes on, the child realises how life isn’t really something we can control. I put down, "I cried and cried, but he never replied," to show how sometimes, no matter how much we want answers, life doesn’t always give us the explanations we're looking for. The child inside us wishes to go back, to relive those carefree days but the road we take isn’t up to us, and it leads us forward whether we’re ready or not.

In the end, the person (child who grew and aged overtime) looked in the mirror and see the old man staring back at him. He was shocked to realise that 'The Old Man' he once met was him, his own future. 

Time is like a mirror that shows us who we’re going to become, even when we don’t see it coming. This poem is about how life changes, how we all grow up, and how we can’t escape time, no matter how hard we try.

Title '"The Mirror of Time" reflects the central theme of the poem i.e. the passage of time and the inevitable process of aging. The mirror here symbolises both literal and figurative reflection. It is the object that reveals the truth, but this truth is something the we don't understand until later in our lives. The mirror serves as a metaphor for self-awareness, where we, after going through time and life’s journey, finally realise that 'The old man' we once met in our lives is none other than ourselves.

Copyright © Ayaan Siddiqui Official | 2025 | All rights reserved.

⚖️ All content on this blog, including text, images, and poems, is protected by copyright law. Reproduction or redistribution of any part of this content without written permission is prohibited.