100,000,000,000,000 poems

The wild horse champs the Parthenon's top frieze
For tea cucumber sandwiches a scone
Replies like this the dumbstruck brain may tease
And empty cages show life's bird has flown
How it suprised us pale grey underlings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
The fertile mother changelings drops like kings
Thou homestead hillside woodland rock and cave
Poetic licence needs no strain or stress
What things we did we went the whole darned hog
The colonel's still escutcheoned in undress
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.