Lyrics Scott Walker

Scott Walker

Amsterdam

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 riverbank 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 fight

And 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 fishheads 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 put it down by my side

Then 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 voice croaks

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

Then out to the night with their pride in their pants

With the slut 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 long 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