100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
The bull's horns ought to dry it like a bone
His toga rumpled high above his knees
The thumb- and finger-prints of Al Capone
The roundabout eats profits made on swings
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
It's no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
Shallots and sharks'fins face the smould'ring log
Poor Yorick comes to bury not address
No need to cart such treasures from the fog
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
They're kings we're mammal-cousins hi ho hum


Raymond Queneau

Translation to English by Stanley Chapman
found in "Oulipo Compendium"
Atlas 1998, ISBN 0-947757-96-1

Idea and implementation by Magnus Bodin 1997
Produced in the wonderful country of Sweden.