100,000,000,000,000 poems

Don Pedro from his shirt has washed the fleas
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
The Turks said just take anything you please
And empty cages show life's bird has flown
They both are right not untamed mutterings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
To break a rule Britannia's might might waive
It's no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
One tongue will do to keep the verse agog
On wheels the tourist follows hos hostess
Their sculptors did our best our hulks the clog
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.