100,000,000,000,000 poems

The wild horse champs the Parthenon's top frieze
The answer is they could be twins full-grown
Replies like this the dumbstruck brain may tease
Which neither time nor tide can long postpone
The roundabout eats profits made on swings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
A daring baron pockets precious Mings
The nicest kids for strickiest toffees crave
Poetic licence needs no strain or stress
What things we did we went the whole darned hog
The colonel's still escutcheoned in undress
We'll suffocate before the epilogue
Do bank clerks rule their abacus by thumb
In cognac brandy is Bacardi rum?


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.