Queneauvian

Farewell, Parisian streets,
The gare Saint-Lazare and Cour de Rome!
I had a little wander, in style after style,
But now I’ve found my way home.

My writing hand grows slow
For I started long ago,
And it just remains for me to declare
Merci! to Raymond Queneau.

Picture the rush-hour S bus,
That chap, with the long neck and felt hat,
The way he thought that everyone would tread on him,
And the speed with which he sat.

Now see, much later, when,
With a friend he walks; and then
Let’s repeat these scenes in different modes,
Over and over again.

Show me the way it might start:
A writer imagines the banal—
Two chance encounters with some chap, two hours apart—
Now he’s in the story’s thrall!

He sets himself a trial
That will test his strength and guile:
Tell the same tale in some 99 ways;
That’s Exercises in Style!