The time I came nearest to meeting W. B. Yeats was late on a summer day in 1969 after I had been up all night on the train from Copenhagen to the Hook of Holland and then all day on the boat to England. I had gone through customs three times in the last 24 hours and been searched for drugs at Harwich, apparently as a punishment for carrying hardly any luggage. Now I was waiting for the bus to take me the last two miles of the journey home, where I could soon and safely collapse. As I stood in the raging British sunshine, bright-colored bubbles floated back and forth on my eyelids, and below my half-awareness of the clank and roar of British traffic I was perhaps one-quarter aware of a whine from somewhere above, rather like a flying lawnmower. I did not look up.

"Biplane," said a voice behind me. It sounded incredibly satisfied. It also sounded old and a trifle un-English, but what made me turn around and attempt to focus was the plain exultation in it. "Converted fighter," it continued.

The man must have been about 75 and had what used to be called a military bearing, though he was thin to the point of fragility and might just as well have been some elegant kind of waltzing poet-soldier, now superannuated, out of an operetta. The disconcerting fact was that he was speaking to me— there was no one else near the bus stop—and flagrantly demanding some sort of answer. I turned my eyes to the sky and tried to focus again. The plane seemed to be an antique crop-duster.

"Sure is," I said, and then, afraid that I sounded too American and might offend this dotty old plane-spotter, added: "Quite right."