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The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
The bull's horns ought to dry it like a bone
Upon his old oak chest he cuts his cheese
With cherry-pips his cottage floor is sown
Oh how oh how he hates such pilferings
Whose ocean still-born herrings madly brave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
With quill white-collared through his life will jog
To prove mamma an adult with a tress
Whiskey will always wake an Irish bog
The Taj Mahal has trinkets spice and gum
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.