100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
Upon his old oak chest he cuts his cheese
One gathers rosebuds or grows old alone
O Parthenon you hold the charger's strings
Nought can the mouse's timid nibbling stave
He's gone to London how the echo rings
In purest cradels tha's how they behave
It's no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
And starve the sniveling baby like a dog
Poor Yorick comes to bury not address
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
Though bretzels take the dols from board-room drum
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.