100,000,000,000,000 poems

The acid tongue with gourmet's expertise
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
With cherry-pips his cottage floor is sown
To one sweet hour of bliss my memory clings
Whose ocean still-born herrings madly brave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
Staunch pilgrims longest journeys can't depress
One tongue will do to keep the verse agog
From cool Parnassus down to wild Loch Ness
Southern baroque's seductive dialogue
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.