100,000,000,000,000 poems

When one with t'other straightaway agrees
Licks round carved marble chops on snails full-blown
Old corned-beef's rusty armour spreads disease
Which neither time nor tide can long postpone
O Parthenon you hold the charger's strings
Nought can the mouse's timid nibbling stave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
To break a rule Britannia's might might waive
The peasants's skirts on rainy days she'd tress
And starve the sniveling baby like a dog
While homeward thirsts to each quenched glass say yes
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
Though bretzels take the dols from board-room drum
Fried grilled black pudding's still the world's best yum


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.