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The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
The bull's horns ought to dry it like a bone
Her native chauffeur waited in the breeze
One gathers rosebuds or grows old alone
O Parthenon you hold the charger's strings
Rejecting ermine to become a knave
A daring baron pockets precious Mings
Etruscan words which Greece and Rome engrave
Platonic Greece was not so talentless
With gravity at gravity's great cog
The country lane just thrives on farmyard mess
Whiskey will always wake an Irish bog
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
And lessors' dates have all too short a sum


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.