100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
Since Elgin left his nostrils in the stone
The understanding critic firstly sees
With cherry-pips his cottage floor is sown
To one sweet hour of bliss my memory clings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
An icicle of frozen marrow pings
In purest cradels tha's how they behave
The genealogist with field and fess
With quill white-collared through his life will jog
The country lane just thrives on farmyard mess
We'll suffocate before the epilogue
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
For Europe's glory while Fate's harpies strum


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.