‘Never forget,’ he used to tell me, ‘that the first poem ever written was from a father to a son. Adam’s elegy for Abel, which was also an elegy for Cain, who, having killed his brother, must wander the earth. And therefore, according to the history of love and poetry, the love of a father for his son is greater than all kinds of love, greater than that of Layla and Majnun, and greater even than the greatest of all loves, that of a mother for her child. But if you tell your mother, I will kill you.’
