A couple of weeks ago, a midday poetry reading session was held at the Sind Club Library. Literary aficionados Bari Mian and Wajid Jawad read out a selection of poems, with members of the audience contributing their own favourites. In the midst of the mayhem of war, there was something restorative and moving about these two speakers, each with a small well-thumbed pocket-sized notebook bursting with paper bookmarks marking the poems to be read.

Most cultural events are held in the evenings, often extending well into the night. This was different. A couple of hours in the middle of the day. A hiatus between the business of the morning and what may well be a fraught evening. It was not a rest, a siesta, but a secret energising, a waking of the soul when many in the city were bent over desks, reconciling accounts.

Midday is seen as a powerful time of the day, when the sun is at its zenith, creating no shadow. A time of sharp clarity, intensity, perfect illumination, exposing the truth of things.

In Slavic and German folklore, Lady Midday was believed to be a spirit that haunted fields at noon, to dissuade those working in the heat. Christian monks refer to the “noonday demon” that creates restlessness and apathy, causing them to believe their work is meaningless.

From the “noonday demon” of mediaeval monks to Nietzsche’s “Great Noon”, midday has long symbolised moments of truth and reckoning

From the “noonday demon” of mediaeval monks to Nietzsche’s “Great Noon”, midday has long symbolised moments of truth and reckoning

For Native Americans, midday is a time of intense energy and spiritual vigilance when the boundary between the physical and spiritual world is active. In epics such as the Mahabharata, noon is portrayed as a quiet turning point when the sun seems to pause, marking a moment for decision-making or action.

The English playwright and composer Noel Coward’s song ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ has the stanza: “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”, referring not to the weak English sun, but the intense sun of its colonies that could not deter the colonial enterprise. “When the white man rides, every native hides in glee/Because the simple creatures hope he will impale his solar topee on a tree/It seems such a shame when the English claim the earth/That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth.”

German priest and philosopher Romano Guardini sees midday as a pause, not from weariness, but as “a pure present when strength and energy are still at the full.” It is a time for a person to re-collect themselves, “spreading out before their heart the problems that have stirred them.”

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book Thus Spake Zarathushtra, sees the “Great Noon” as the high point of humanity, the moment when we finally abandon all those “lies” — ideals, beliefs, moral principles that are the “exact opposite of the ones which would ensure man’s prosperity, his future and his great right to a future.” It is a “moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error.”

It is a calm like no other, a mystic intuition of truths disclosed in the midst of life. The “Great Midday” represents a stage of civilisation that has overcome its savage past but faces nihilism, or the loss of morality, values and purpose.

The term ‘High Noon’, made famous by the 1952 Western film, became an idiom for a final, dramatic showdown, a moment of confrontation, the ultimate test, an event which is likely to decide the final outcome of a situation. Jean-François Rischard, a former vice president of the World Bank, was the first to use the term in a political context in his 2002 book High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. It has since become a catchphrase for describing the crises of world politics.

The English writer James Plunkett, author of End State, asks: “Why is it hard to put a finger on the political moment we’re in?” Perhaps 2026 has brought clarity as the world faces a critical time of intense superpower rivalry, a volatile period where new coalitions are replacing the old.

Plunkett notes, in the midst of banal AI-generated content, it is also a time of unusual intellectual vitality, the rise of slow well-researched journalism, that braves the scorching political heat of this midday, asking the right question: not how we can ‘buy’ a better future, but how we can envision a better world. How can we govern in poetry, not prose?

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 29th, 2026

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