Albums > Faith & Superstition > Lyrics > Track 2. Amsterdam

It’s been a while since the sixties when we were freed from all the old taboos. Certain elements of the Brave New World seem to be synonomous with the City of Amsterdam; we spent a couple of days there last year, and soon found out why the guest house we had booked was (relatively) cheap… I would like to say this song was commissioned by the Netherlands Tourist Authority, but that would not be strictly true.

Forty years since the liberation
Forty years since the barriers fell
Since the children of the revolution
laid aside their fathers’ hell
Forty year of the new explanation
Peace love and freedom made known
We got ourselves back to the garden
Now see what the garden has grown

In Amsterdam, in Amsterdam, in Amsterdam today

Red neon glints on the dirty canal
and the lamplit streets are shoulder to shoulder
with good time seekers disgorged from the bellies
of the big sky-choking jets
Pilgrims of the latter day
To this Compostella where heaven is redefined
As financial transaction for brief satisfaction
All you need is a handful of euros

In Amsterdam....

In the middle of it all, the hollow husk of history
In a great barn of a church, now an empty void
Floored by endless rows of blue marble grave stones
At least those beneath have the integrity to admit that they are dead
Hovering in the half light the ghost of John Calvin gibbers soundless phrases
His religion dried to dust and swept by the wind
into the dark corners where faith
Laid down and died

In Amsterdam.....

Cold morning light crawls through the curtains
Of the dingy hotels where the satiated sleep
At this cul-de-sac consummation, this dying of the liberal dream
Is this what you wanted? is this all there is?
And council workers hose vomit from the street
Where the women sell themselves like meat
And the scent of death is sick and sweet

In Amsterdam....

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