100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
That horders of crooks felt they'd more right to own
The understanding critic firstly sees
The thumb- and finger-prints of Al Capone
How it suprised us pale grey underlings
Filching the lolly country thrift helped save
The learning linguist cameramaniac sings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
The fasting fakir doesn't smell the less
Shallots and sharks'fins face the smould'ring log
The colonel's still escutcheoned in undress
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
Soliloquies predict great things old chum


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.