It began 14 years ago in a burst of mobile poetry, but it has now become a literary mystery tale, with a sudden and unhappy ending.

You could call it The Dolorous Case of the Missing Subway Poems.

No one seems to know why they’re gone, but gone they are.

Regular passengers on the Toronto subway system are sure to be familiar with them — brief, lyric poems printed in slightly washed-out colours on large white cards that appeared amid the commercial jumble of advertising posters on TTC trains, like wild flowers amid the weeds.

The initiative was known as Poetry on the Way, and it has been a quaint but bracing distraction for subway riders since its launch in 1998.

“I was always hoping to see them,” said subway rider Steven Bush, 67. “There seemed to be a fair range of poems. They really broke up the monotony.”

The initiative was modelled on similar projects in London, New York, Rome and Dublin, in which provocative passages of printed verse are placed on public transit — with or without the alliteration.

“As a TTC rider, I was always a big fan,” said Alastair Cheng, managing editor of The Literary Review of Canada. “It always struck me as a great program. If it’s stopped, it would be a shame. If it’s stopped, I’ll certainly miss it.”

Unfortunately, there is no “if.”

The program has indeed been stopped.

The mystery is in the why.

TTC spokesman Danny Nicholson says the transit commission doesn’t know the answer.

“That program,” he said, “we haven’t really been involved in it for several years.”

In fact, the whole enterprise seems to have been the brainchild of a single Toronto resident named Denis Deneau, who formed an outfit called the Poetry on the Way Literary Group in 1997 and promptly applied to the Canada Council for an arts grant.

Deneau’s goal was to bring poetry to the people, or at least to Toronto’s ghost-like subway riders as they shuttle among the dreary, utilitarian platforms that serve as station stops for the TTC, each one almost indistinguishable from the next.

A check with the Canada Council revealed that the group received an initial grant of $54,000 in 1997 and made four subsequent applications for varying amounts during the ensuing decade or so, winning approval each time.

The group’s final application — for $19,000 — was approved in 2010 and was intended to cover the costs of the poetry project for a one-year period that ended last September, which is roughly when the poetry stopped.

“They haven’t applied to us since,” said Mireille Allaire, a Canada Council spokeswoman.

As a result, and until further notice, poetry is now officially off the way.

Attempts to locate Deneau proved unsuccessful.

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He did not reply to phone calls, email, or a brief message left on his not-very-revealing Facebook page.

Cheng at The Literary Review of Canada said no one at the magazine has current contact information for Deneau, who used to be publisher and part-owner of the publication.

In an essay he penned eight years ago for Now magazine, Toronto writer and broadcaster Robert Priest described Deneau as “an elegant sandy-voiced gent with an air of an off-duty Ottawa mandarin.”

At the time, Deneau said his principal motivation in running the poetry project was to gain attention and money for poets, especially Canadians, who were paid $400 in exchange for allowing their work to be included in the initiative — assuming they were still alive.

According to Deneau, he and several colleagues jointly chose which poems were to be highlighted in a lineup that changed every month or so. Space amid the rows of advertising posters was typically provided free of charge by a succession of media companies working on contract for the TTC.

Over the years, Poetry on the Way reproduced the work of poets ranging from Irving Layton and Archibald Lampman to Desi di Nardo and P.K. Page.

Some criticized the project for favouring works that were insufficiently challenging, but this was likely a minority view.

Either way, the interior walls of TTC trains have ceased to be a moving venue for verse, and so riders will have no choice but to remain glued to their digital devices — or else prepare to be overwhelmed by an unbroken array of advertising.

Or maybe not. If New York is any example, there may yet be hope.

Launched in 1992, a scheme called Poetry in Motion presented poems on New York public transit until its suspension in 2008. Earlier this year, however, New York transit officials announced the program would be resurrected.

“We heard loud and clear that Poetry in Motion was missed, and it would be great to have it back,” said Sandra Bloodworth, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Maybe the same could happen here.

“I would welcome it, for sure,” said subway rider Steven Bush. “It introduced us to new poetry. It was always more interesting than advertising.”