Songtext 1917 The Fiery Furnaces

1917

Going down Morgan with Janko, Jerko, and Jerry,
We downed our Pils, and over at the South Shore, they sipped their sherry.
I opened my Kaiserized speller to learn what they know:
Nurse killers, annexers-executioners, wo!
Hey Slavonians, be ye mindful
That our ‘tis tongue dies never.
The happy Hun Felsch sure likes his blond beer
And I like his doubles so much I might even cheer.
Last year he had enough and got fixed on the cardinal
Who'd pardon all
The riff-raff and all their sinister ways and halfs and he laughs
Over on 56th, and he's got the arsenic on his left White Sock
And he sees the chicken stock in a big black pot
And he pours in the lot, but what ruined or saved the day
Was that the soup then turned gray, and a hundred higher-ups came
Back from the hospital to keep getting wafers from Mundelein:
But now the Gigantics are getting the tar taken out of their pine
By my hero Red Faber and I'm ready to get rapprochement with my neighbor
As part of the healthy back and forth—
But not if he's from up north.
So I ask Dad, Why can't we ever win, ever win, once?
Go ask Dad, why you can't ever win, ever win, once.