MARK DOTY “Atlantis: Part I, Faith”

ATLANTIS

1. FAITH

“I’ve been having these
awful dreams, each a little different,
though the core’s the same—

we’re walking in a field,
Wally and Arden and I, a stretch of grass
with a highway running beside it,

or a path in the woods that opens
onto a road. Everything’s fine,
then the dog sprints ahead of us,

 excited; we’re calling but
he’s racing down a scent and doesn’t hear us,
and that’s when he goes

onto the highway. I don’t want to describe it.
Sometimes it’s brutal and over,
and others he’s struck and takes off 

so we don’t know where he is
or how bad. This wakes me
every night now, and I stay awake;

I’m afraid if I sleep I’ll go back
into the dream. It’s been six months,
almost exactly, since the doctor wrote

not even a real word
but an acronym, a vacant
four-letter cipher 

that draws meanings into itself,
reconstitutes the world.
We tried to say it was just

a word; we tried to admit
it had power and thus to nullify it
by means of our acknowledgement.

I know the current wisdom:
bright hope, the power of wishing you’re well.
He’s just so tired, though nothing

shows in any tests, Nothing,
the doctor says, detectable;
the doctor doesn’t hear what I do,

that trickling, steadily rising nothing
that makes him sleep all day,
vanish into fever’s tranced afternoons,

and I swear sometimes
when I put my head to his chest
I can hear the virus humming

like a refrigerator.
Which is what makes me think
you can take your positive attitude

and go straight to hell.
We don’t have a future,
we have a dog.
      Who is he?

Soul without speech,
sheer, tireless faith,
he is that-which-goes-forward,

black muzzle, black paws
scouting what’s ahead;
he is where we’ll be hit first,

he’s the part of us
that’s going to get it.
I’m hardly awake on our morning walk

—always just me and Arden now—
and sometimes I am still
in the thrall of the dream,

which is why, when he took a step onto Commercial
before I’d looked both ways,
I screamed his name and grabbed his collar.

And there I was on my knees,
both arms around his neck
and nothing coming,

and when I looked into that bewildered face
I realized I didn’t know what it was
I was shouting at,

I didn’t know who I was trying to protect.”

            A few days ago I went for a walk with a friend, and we talked about his dog, an Irish Setter.  I said I knew a wonderful poem about a setter, and when I came home I looked it up.  (I am not sure it is about a setter, but that is how I remembered it…)  It is the final poem of a magnificent poetic sequence, “Atlantis,” written by Mark Doty as a meditation on and celebration of his partner Wally Roberts, who in 1989 tested positive for AIDS and subsequently died of that disease. The final section of the sequence is about how he brought home a dog to his dying partner, who loved the glorious embodiment of life and continuity that was the dog, even as the partner, Wally lay, dying, in his bed.  Here is the ending of that section: 

I have never seen a touch
so deliberate.
It isn’t about grasping;
the hand itself seems
almost blurred now,
softened, though
tentative only

because so much will
must be summoned,
such attention brought
to the work—which is all
he is now, this gesture
toward the restless splendor,
the unruly, the golden,
the animal, the new.

I welcomed the opportunity to re-read “Atlantis,” which to my mind is one of the most moving poems of our times.  When I read the sequence, I do what I do when I hear the opera La Bohème:  I cry all the way through.  Death, or rather incipient death, and our inability to forestall it, is the theme of the poem, and most specifically, the horrible death sentence that AIDS presented to those who were afflicted before the ‘invention’ of those pharmaceutical cocktails which have, since, meant that AIDS can be a managed illness rather than a condemnation to death.
I commend the entire sequence of six poems to you. [It can be found on the web by typing ‘Doty Atlantis’ into a search engine.  Unlike in the past, when I would provide links, I am trying to avoid spam filters by no longer including web links….]   But in this letter, I want to investigate the first section of “Atlantis,” which is also about a dog.

           As the poem opens, the speaker recounts his recent dreams, which involve walking with Wally and their dog, Arden. 

we’re walking in a field,
Wally and Arden and I, a stretch of grass
with a highway running beside it,

In his dreams, Arden – as dogs are wont to do – races off ahead of them (remember, they are walking on the grassy verge) and heads into a trafficked road: 

Everything’s fine,
then the dog sprints ahead of us,

excited; we’re calling but
he’s racing down a scent and doesn’t hear us,
and that’s when he goes

onto the highway. I don’t want to describe it.
Sometimes it’s brutal and over,
and others he’s struck and takes off

so we don’t know where he is
or how bad.

Catastrophe.  Disaster.  Wreckage. The dog is killed or maimed, and we recognize, as does the speaker, that the dream dog is a representation of the fate that awaits the two men, and in particular Wally.
The speaker wakes from the dream, dreading going back to sleep since in that uncontrolled state the dream may resume.  Let me recapitulate: The dog, going ahead, gets hit by a car, and that catastrophe symbolizes the catastrophe ahead when Wally will, alas, die.  Notice how Doty eases into revealing to us the actual situation: We discover it as they discovered it in a doctor’s office. 

It’s been six months,
almost exactly, since the doctor wrote

not even a real word
but an acronym, a vacant
four-letter cipher

that draws meanings into itself,
reconstitutes the world.

“Not even a real word, but an acronym.”   The word itself is an acronym, “vacant,’ full of meaning for the two men but somehow empty, the acronym for ‘acquired immune-deficiency syndrome.’  Scientific language, an abstraction of an abstraction.  AIDS.  What Wally has, a condition which “draws meanings into itself,/ reconstitutes the world.”
For with the diagnosis, the world is reconstituted.  Life, which was daily and seemingly ongoing – almost everlastingly – is now reduced to a struggle which Wally cannot survive.   The diagnosis, those four letters, AIDS, will redefine their world, make all that happens meaningful in relation to what the doctor has written on his pad.
Let me not go too quickly.  The power of words, in this case “not even a real word,” a word “vacant” of derivation or meaning from long use, a word that is a cipher and yet full of meaning because of what it augurs for their life ahead, because “reconstitutes the world.”  Reconstitutes – reshapes rebuilds, reconstructs – the world as their awareness of decline and death are drawn to it as the iron filings of everyday happenings are drawn to a magnet and given new shapes by its attractive forces.  As far as ordinary language goes (jar, tree, field, friend) AIDS is empty scientific jargon:  It is, to use a term that will soon be emphasized in the poem, ‘nothing.’ “not even a real word.”
Over this word, and what it represents, they try verbal magical thinking, and then the ‘power’ of acknowledgment, and then the ‘power’ of mind over matter: 

We tried to say it was just

a word; we tried to admit
it had power and thus to nullify it
by means of our acknowledgement.

I know the current wisdom:
bright hope, the power of wishing you’re well.

Ah, that “bright hope,” that positive thinking can overcome calamity.
But the daily, undeniable truth breaks in, of the felt but unmeasurable effects of the disease. 

He’s just so tired, though nothing 

shows in any tests, Nothing,
the doctor says, detectable;
the doctor doesn’t hear what I do,

that trickling, steadily rising nothing
that makes him sleep all day,
vanish into fever’s tranced afternoons,

It is “nothing,” at least nothing measurable, yet that nothingness has reconstituted their world.  It is as if the speaker can hear what the doctor cannot measure, the advance of AIDS, and then he turns to a remarkable simile, of a refrigerator, something concrete and real and also huge: 

and I swear sometimes
when I put my head to his chest
I can hear the virus humming

like a refrigerator.

Anger follows, with the remarkably colloquial, “you can take your positive attitude/and go straight to hell.” (The distant rhyme, between “wishing you’re well” and “you can take your positive attitude/and go straight to hell” underlines the stark reality of the disease and its inexorable progress…)
Without a future, for the death ahead is certain, and with a dog.  What does that mean? He asks, of the dog, “Who is he?”
First the answer is abstract, though not any the less ‘real;’ then it is specific and actual, the way the dog actually appears, its physical manifestation, muzzle and paws:

Soul without speech,
sheer, tireless faith,
he is that-which-goes-forward,

black muzzle, black paws
scouting what’s ahead;

But for the specific references, we might be turned away by that deeply philosophical (theological) language, “that-which-goes-forward.”   Doty intuits that this ‘scout’ is ahead of his partner and himself, and the forwardness means something terrible: “he’s the part of us/ that’s going to get it.”  And from these thoughts he returns, leaving behind dreams and ruminations, to the actual, real, everyday world.   He is walking Arden in the morning, just the two of them.  Such a sad line, “always just me and Arden now,” as Wally is absent, home, in bed, too weak to walk.  No longer asleep and dreaming, the speaker seems “still in the thrall of the dream,” which we recall was a dream of Arden sprinting ahead and running into a road and being hit by a car.
Here is what happens next: The poet is barely awake, on his morning walk, “just me and Arden now.”  Ahead of him, probably leash-less, Arden steps into the road:

when he took a step onto Commercial
before I’d looked both ways,
I screamed his name and grabbed his collar.

And there I was on my knees
both arms around his neck
and nothing coming,

We, readers, are smart.  We’ve seen that ‘nothing’ before in the poem, first as a vacant cipher [AIDS], not even a real word, “an acronym, a vacant/ four-letter cipher” [emphasis added]. Then, even more specifically, as the unseeable and immeasurable vacancy that spells doom: “He’s just so tired, though nothing/ shows in any tests, Nothing,/ the doctor says, detectable” [emphasis added].
That “nothing,” part medical acronym, part medical actuality, is what is consuming Wally from within, consuming their loving partnership, consuming the trio that is Mark Doty and Wally and Arden.  AIDS, invisible and destructive.
The dog is ‘bewildered,” as a human grabs at him, hugs him, shouts.  The human, we recognize, as the poet himself does, is bewildered also, shouting powerlessly at the ‘nothing’ that will destroy Wally and their love and the trio that is the partners and their dog.

and when I looked into that bewildered face
I realized I didn’t know what it was
I was shouting at,

I didn’t know who I was trying to protect.”

The confusion is understandable and enormously moving.  The poet is ostensibly shouting at the dog, trying to protect it; he is also trying to protect himself; he is also trying to protect Wally.  All are being threatened, as the moving traffic threatens a dog in the street, by a ‘nothing’ that has reconstituted their world.  (The concluding quotation marks indicate that throughout the poem, the poet has been speaking, to himself and to us.)
The dog is “bewildered,” the poet is clueless, not knowing “what it was/ I was shouting at,// I didn’t know who I was trying to protect.”  He hugs Arden, as we know he also hugs Wally.  But hugging is insufficient in the face of the invisible ‘nothingness’ which looms.
We are left, at the end of the poem, with a man hugging his dog in the street, terrified by looming catastrophe, angry and bewildered and frightened by what lies ahead.