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 empty cages show life's bird has flown
The frisian Isles my friends are cherised things
Whose ocean still-born herrings madly brave
The learning linguist cameramaniac sings
Thou homestead hillside woodland rock and cave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
What things we did we went the whole darned hog
From cool Parnassus down to wild Loch Ness
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
With marble souvenirs then fill a slum
For Europe's glory while Fate's harpies strum


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.