100,000,000,000,000 poems

The acid tongue with gourmet's expertise
The answer is they could be twins full-grown
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
With cherry-pips his cottage floor is sown
Old Galileo's Pisan offerings
Whose ocean still-born herrings madly brave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
The genealogist with field and fess
Or grinning like a pale-faced golliwog
To prove mamma an adult with a tress
Their sculptors did our best our hulks the clog
Do bank clerks rule their abacus by thumb
Fried grilled black pudding's still the world's best yum


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.