Port of Hamburg by Gabriel Kahane Lyrics

After school
They chant her name
She runs home
She prays

But caught because her father
Couldn’t quite believe
What ought to’ve been plain to see
‘Til broken glass was at their feet
And now they could not wait
Some clothes and letters in a crate;
Left the cat and drove away

Steamship
Wool sky
All seasick
The tide

She held her breath until
At last they’d got across
But they weren’t allowed to dock
All because the country didn’t want
To let those people through
Ain’t that a familiar tune?
I have to sing it back to you
History
Don’t have a chance
Drowning in the false, fat
Present tense

And why would you need
To know anything
That happened any earlier
Than late last week?

Lucky one
She got in—
Some papers signed
By distant kin

And every night she wrote
Six postcards sent back home
And when she read the brief replies
My grandmother would start to cry
The careful script it could not hide
The fear in every one
She read beneath the L.A. sun
Until the letters did not come

History
Don’t have a chance
Drowning in the force-fed
Present tense
Why would you need
To know anything
That happened any earlier
Than late last week?
Than late last week?
Than late last week?