| In the port of Amsterdam, there’s a sailor who sings
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| Of the dreams that he brings from the wide open sea
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| In the port of Amsterdam, there’s a sailor who sleeps
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| While the river-bank weeps to the old willow tree
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| In the port of Amsterdam, there’s a sailor who dies
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| Full of beer, full of cries, in a drunken down fight
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| But in the port of Amsterdam, there’s a sailor who’s born
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| On a muggy hot morn, by the dawn’s early light
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| In the port of Amsterdam, where the sailors all meet
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| There’s a sailor who eats only fish-heads and -tails
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| And he’ll show you his teeth that have rotted too soon
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| That can drink down the moon, that can haul up the sails
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| And he turns to the cook, with his arms open wide
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| «Bring me more fish, put it down by my side»
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| And he wants so to belch, but he’s too full to try
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| So he gets up and he laughs, and he zips up his fly
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| In the port of Amsterdam, you can see sailors dance
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| Paunches bursting their pants, grinding women to paunch
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| They’ve forgotten the tune that their whiskey-voice croaks
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| Splitting the night with the roar of their jokes
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| And they turn and they dance and they laugh and they lust
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| Til the rancid sound of the accordion bursts
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| And it’s into the night with their pride in their pants
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| And the slut that they tow underneath the streetlamps
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| In the port of Amsterdam there’s a sailor who drinks
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| And he drinks, and he drinks, and he drinks once again
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| He drinks to the health of the whores of Amsterdam
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| Who have promised their love to a thousand other men
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| They have bargained their bodies, their virtues all gone
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| For a few dirty coins, and when he can’t go on
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| He puts his nose in the air, and he wipes it up above
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| And he pisses like I cry for an unfaithful love
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| In the port of Amsterdam, in the port of Amsterdam
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| In the port of Amsterdam |