100,000,000,000,000 poems

From playboy Chance the nymph no longer flees
Through snobbish growing round her hemline zone
Forms shadowy with indecision wheeze
Normal one aims to be and share the throne
The roundabout eats profits made on swings
Whose ocean still-born herrings madly brave
Such merchandise a melancholy brings
As sleeping-bags the silent landscape pave
The wolf devours both sheep and shepherdess
What things we did we went the whole darned hog
Watching manure and compost coalesce
With breaking voice across the Alps they slog
Where no one bothered how one warmed one's bum
They're kings we're mammal-cousins hi ho hum


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.