100,000,000,000,000 poems

Prose took the minstrel's verse without a squeeze
The answer is they could be twins full-grown
Old corned-beef's rusty armour spreads disease
While sharks to let's say potted shrimps are prone
They both are right not untamed mutterings
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
They both are right not unformed smatterings
For burning bushes never fish forgave
Emboggled minds may puff and blow and guess
Shallots and sharks'fins face the smould'ring log
From cool Parnassus down to wild Loch Ness
But I can understand you Brogher Gog
Suits lisping Spanish tongues for whom say some
They're kings we're mammal-cousins hi ho hum


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.