Some Local Poetry History And A Poem By Juan O’Neill
09/30/2012 05:07 p.m.

Included below is one of my favorite poems, by local friend and mentor, Juan O’Neill.

Juan was born in Cuba during the pre Castro days, and even met Ernest Hemingway, also a resident at the time, once when the island celebrated the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.

Juan’s father was Canadian, and his mother Cuban, and the three fled to Canada when Castro and the communists took over in 1959.

Over the course of his life, Juan did many things to make ends meet, including journalist, civil servant, restaurant owner, but at the end of his life, a translator. He spoke fluent English and Spanish, and often got contracts to translate American situation comedies and documentaries into Spanish, the main market being in Central and South America.

I first met Juan here in Ottawa at the Jury Room Workshop, a critique group and think tank of sorts, where writers of various backgrounds, styles and talents, would present a piece of work (a poem, the chapter of a novel, short story, play), reading it to the group, who would then offer constructive criticism. I was in good company. Juan had gone to McGill University in Montreal with Leonard Cohen, and another friend in the group, Marty Flomen, had been an English student of Irving Layton’s, also in Montreal.

The Jury Room Workshop provided me with the kind of invaluable training I needed to become a better writer, doubtful I could have learned the same way at any university. I was a member off and on for ten years, then dropped out of the writing scene for a while. A few years later, Juan and I met again at a poetry party, and he invited me to help out running his series, Sasquatch. Maureen Glaude and I shared publicity duties for a time, then I took over as webmaster in 2000, and remained in that position until I stepped down in 2010.

Looking back, poetry wise, those were the good old days, and some of the happiest times in my life. I was part of large circle of friends…fellow poets, with regular gatherings and parties of all kinds. Sadly, many of those people are now gone, including Marty, Juan, Maureen, and many others, while a few scattered across Canada for various reasons, mainly retirement or employment.

Juan passed away on the Ides (15th) of March, 2006. Those of us who ran the Sasquatch Reading Series decided to keep it going in his memory and honor. It wasn’t the same though without Juan, as we soon realized with the spotty if not poor turnouts at readings. Juan was such a great story teller and networker, personality, many of the people he attracted to the readings were seldom if ever seen again.

Not long after I left, the rest of the crew threw in the towel also, and so Sasquatch only exists now in the memories of those who participated, or just came out to listen. And a good time was had by all. But as George Harrison once said, “All things must pass.”

Here’s Juan’s poem:


Abandoned Railway Station, Ontario

There is rust on the tracks,
there are weeds in the gravel.
The little red station stands solitary,
like an old man waiting.
But the passenger trains
do not stop here anymore.
The long hoots of the steam locomotives
That roused the dreams of children in the night,
and brought people down to meet the trains
(crisp linen and real silver in the dining car,
ice tinkling in drinks at the bar,
hellos and goodbyes on the platform,
gruff “All Aboard!”)
are no more.
Only the occasional rumble
of a freight train passing through
disturbs the quiet.
An engineer in a towering diesel
waves at my little girl as we watch.
She is only three.
A tenuous link has been established
with the past
It hasn’t.
Years later I ask her
If she remembers.
She doesn’t.

We walk past the station.
I used to get on an off here,
on weekend trips
from boarding school in Toronto.
I shook the hand of a prime minister here once,
grandfatherly Louis St. Laurent,
on campaign in ’48,
wishing him “The best of luck, Sir.”
I remember a Protestant funeral,
a minister, I think,
his coffin put aboard
by a group of cheerful-sad people,
singing, “In the Sweet Bye and Bye”;
I, on the train,
with adolescent Catholic queasiness,
listening.

Time has stopped a story in mid-sentence here,
like ashes on Pompeii;
except that these actors are not preserved
as hollows in an ash mantle.
They are gone:
To Toronto, to Vancouver, to Miami,
to the cemeteries at the edge of town,
leaving the name of the place
on a flaking sign,
looking out on silence.

© Juan O’Neill



I am currently Creative
I am listening to Silence