In the port of Amsterdam

There’s a sailor who sings

Of the dreams that he brings

From the wide open sea

 

In the port of Amsterdam

There’s a sailor who sleeps

While the river bank weeps

With the old willow tree

 

In the port of Amsterdam

There’s a sailor who dies

Full of beer full of cries

In a drunken down/town (?) fight

 

But in the port of Amsterdam

There’s a sailor who’s born

On a muggy hot morn

By the dawn’s early light

 

In the port of Amsterdam

Where the sailors all meet

There’s a sailor who eats

Only fish heads and tails

He will show you his teeth

That have rotted too soon

That can swallow the moon

That can haul up the sails

And he yells to the cook with his arms open wide

Bring me more fish set it down by my side

And he wants so to belch but he’s too full to try

So he gets up and laughs and he zips up his fly

 

In the port of Amsterdam

You can see sailors dance

Paunches bursting their pants

Grinding women to paunch (?)

They’ve forgotten the tune

That their whiskey voices croaked (?)

Splitting (?) the night

With the roar of their jokes

 

And they turn and they dance and they laugh and they lust

Till the rancid sound of the accordion bursts

And then out to the night with their pride in their pants

And the sluts that they tow underneath the street lamps

 

In the port of Amsterdam

There’s a sailor who drinks

And he drinks and he drinks and he drinks once again

He drinks to the health of the whores of Amsterdam

Who have promised their love to a thousand other men

They’ve bargained their bodies and their virtue’s all gone

For a few dirty coins

And when he can't go on

He plants his nose in the sky

And he wipes it up above

And he pisses like I cry

For an unfaithful love

 

In the port of Amsterdam

In the port of Amsterdam