100,000,000,000,000 poems

He bent right down to pick up his valise
For tea cucumber sandwiches a scone
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
While sharks to let's say potted shrimps are prone
The frisian Isles my friends are cherised things
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
He's gone to London how the echo rings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
With quill white-collared through his life will jog
While homeward thirsts to each quenched glass say yes
Whiskey will always wake an Irish bog
Suits lisping Spanish tongues for whom say some
And lessors' dates have all too short a sum


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.