100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
Licks round carved marble chops on snails full-blown
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
And loudly sang off-key without a tone
It's one of many horrid happenings
Were pots graffiti'd over by a slave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
For burning bushes never fish forgave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
With gravity at gravity's great cog
The country lane just thrives on farmyard mess
Their sculptors did our best our hulks the clog
Though bretzels take the dols from board-room drum
A wise loaf always knows its humblest crumb


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.