100,000,000,000,000 poems

Prose took the minstrel's verse without a squeeze
Licks round carved marble chops on snails full-blown
Replies like this the dumbstruck brain may tease
With cherry-pips his cottage floor is sown
And yet 'twas he the beggar Fate just flings
Rejecting ermine to become a knave
They both are right not unformed smatterings
As sleeping-bags the silent landscape pave
The peasants's skirts on rainy days she'd tress
With quill white-collared through his life will jog
While homeward thirsts to each quenched glass say yes
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
The best of all things to an end must come


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.