India, Sept. 20 -- When You Are Old is not among WB Yeats's most admired poems. The Second Coming is. No surprises there, because miseries - war, pestilence, natural disasters - have been visiting the world relentlessly in the recent past.

The Irishman's vision of a "rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born" is unmistakably borne out by these visitations. I turn to that bewitching poem repeatedly, in awe of the poet's sense of doom which one part of me shares.

My favourite Yeats poem today is When You Are Old. The most obvious reason for this, of course, is that I am old. At 81, or 82, or thereabouts, very old.

I warm to the poem just as I do to a hand extended for me to hold and trust it, when I am climbing down steps or get...