100,000,000,000,000 poems

Prose took the minstrel's verse without a squeeze
For tea cucumber sandwiches a scone
The showman gargles fire and sword with ease
While sharks to let's say potted shrimps are prone
Old Galileo's Pisan offerings
Filching the lolly country thrift helped save
The learning linguist cameramaniac sings
The nicest kids for strickiest toffees crave
Staunch pilgrims longest journeys can't depress
Shallots and sharks'fins face the smould'ring log
Poor Yorick comes to bury not address
One misses cricket hearth and croaking frog
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.