100,000,000,000,000 poems

At five precisely out went La Marquise
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
With cherry-pips his cottage floor is sown
To one sweet hour of bliss my memory clings
With sombre thoughts they grimly line the nave
He's gone to London how the echo rings
As sleeping-bags the silent landscape pave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
A piercint wit would sprightliest horses flog
Socrates watched his hemlock effervesce
Whiskey will always wake an Irish bog
Do bank clerks rule their abacus by thumb
In cognac brandy is Bacardi rum?


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.