100,000,000,000,000 poems

When one with t'other straightaway agrees
When masons clutch the breath we held on loan
The Turks said just take anything you please
One gathers rosebuds or grows old alone
To one sweet hour of bliss my memory clings
With sombre thoughts they grimly line the nave
An icicle of frozen marrow pings
Till firemen come with hose-piped tidal wave
The genealogist with field and fess
One tongue will do to keep the verse agog
The colonel's still escutcheoned in undress
No need to cart such treasures from the fog
And let you off from your opinions glum
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.