100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
The answer is they could be twins full-grown
Old corned-beef's rusty armour spreads disease
And loudly sang off-key without a tone
Old Galileo's Pisan offerings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
They both are right not unformed smatterings
For burning bushes never fish forgave
It's no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
Or grinning like a pale-faced golliwog
Watching manure and compost coalesce
But I can understand you Brogher Gog
With marble souvenirs then fill a slum
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.