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 to the old willow tree      In the port of Amsterdam there's a sailor who dies   Full of beer, full of cries in a drinkin' down fight   But in the port of Amsterdam there's a sailor who's born   On a muggy hot morn by the dawns 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 asks to the cook with his arms open wide   Bring me more fish, put it down by my side   And he wants so to belch, but he's too full to try   So he gets up and he laughs and he zips up his fly      In the port of Amsterdam you can see sailors dance   Haunches bursting their pants, binding woman to paunch   They've forgotten the tune that their whiskey voice croaks   And they're splitting the night with the roar of their jokes      And they turn and they dance and they laugh and they lust   To the rats it sounds of the accordion burst   Then it's out into the night with their pride in their pants   And a 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      And they darken their bodies and their virtue long gone   For a few dirty coins and then when he can't go on   He plants his nose in the sky and he wipes it up above   And he splits like I cry for an unfaithful love      In the port of Amsterdam   In the port of Amsterdam   In the port of Amsterdam