100,000,000,000,000 poems

The marble tomb gapes wide with jangling keys
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
The Turks said just take anything you please
The thumb- and finger-prints of Al Capone
Old Galileo's Pisan offerings
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
To break a rule Britannia's might might waive
Emboggled minds may puff and blow and guess
With gravity at gravity's great cog
While homeward thirsts to each quenched glass say yes
But I can understand you Brogher Gog
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.