This is with reference to an article published in a local newspaper recently which left me rather astonished with its quotation of a poem supposedly by the iconic Amjad Islam Amjad, titled The Wind Cannot Read.
The writer is apparently unaware that this is actually an unattributed Japanese poem which reads: Though on the sign it is written ‘Do not pluck these blossoms’, it is useless against the wind which cannot read. Maybe it is a haiku, as the article suggests, but it is Japanese.
Some of the readers would surely know of the 1958 film with the same title, based on a novel by Richard Mason and starring Dirk Bogarde. It is a touching story of a romance between a British officer and a Japanese woman during World War II.
Is it really possible that Amjad Sahib wrote, and claimed as his own, the Japanese poem, The Wind Cannot Read?
HASAN PERVEZ
KARACHI
