100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
The bull's horns ought to dry it like a bone
The Turks said just take anything you please
And empty cages show life's bird has flown
To one sweet hour of bliss my memory clings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
They both are right not unformed smatterings
Victorious worms grind all into the grave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
What things we did we went the whole darned hog
To prove mamma an adult with a tress
But I can understand you Brogher Gog
Though bretzels take the dols from board-room drum
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.