100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
When masons clutch the breath we held on loan
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
One gathers rosebuds or grows old alone
How it suprised us pale grey underlings
Whose ocean still-born herrings madly brave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
The nicest kids for strickiest toffees crave
It's no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
With gravity at gravity's great cog
To prove mamma an adult with a tress
Whiskey will always wake an Irish bog
Where no one bothered how one warmed one's bum
yet from the City's pie pulled not one plum


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.