100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
For tea cucumber sandwiches a scone
The Turks said just take anything you please
The thumb- and finger-prints of Al Capone
Old Galileo's Pisan offerings
When flame a form to wrath ancestral gave
Proud death quite il-le-gi-ti-mate-ly stings
Etruscan words which Greece and Rome engrave
Poetic licence needs no strain or stress
A bird-brain banquet melts bold Mistress Mog
Watching manure and compost coalesce
Whiskey will always wake an Irish bog
Though bretzels take the dols from board-room drum
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.