100,000,000,000,000 poems

He bent right down to pick up his valise
For tea cucumber sandwiches a scone
The Turks said just take anything you please
Normal one aims to be and share the throne
The roundabout eats profits made on swings
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
The learning linguist cameramaniac sings
Etruscan words which Greece and Rome engrave
It's no good rich men crying Heaven Bless
In indian summers Englishmen drink grog
From cool Parnassus down to wild Loch Ness
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
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.