Answer
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You do not do,
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You do not do
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Any more, black shoe
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In which I have lived like a foot
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For thirty years, poor and white,
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Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
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Daddy, I have had to kill you.
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You died before I had time---
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Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
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Ghastly statue with one gray toe
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Big as a Frisco seal
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And a head in the freakish Atlantic
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Where it pours bean green over blue
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In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
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I used to pray to recover you.
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Ach, du.
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In the German tongue, in the Polish town
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Scraped flat by the roller
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Of wars, wars, wars.
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But the name of the town is common.
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My Polack friend
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Says there are a dozen or two.
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So I never could tell where you
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Put your foot, your root,
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I never could talk to you.
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The tongue stuck in my jaw.
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It stuck like a barb wire snare.
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Ich, ich, ich, ich,
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I could hardly speak.
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I thought every German was you.
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And the language obscene
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An engine, an engine,
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Chuffing me off like a Jew.
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A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
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I began to talk like a Jew.
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I think I may well be a Jew.
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The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
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Are not very pure or true.
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With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
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And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
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I may be a bit of a Jew.
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I have always been scared of you,
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With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
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And your neat mustache
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And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
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Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---
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Not God but a swastika
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So black no sky could squeak through.
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Every woman adores a Fascist,
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The boot in the face, the brute
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Brute heart of a brute like you.
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You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
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In the picture I have of you,
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A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
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But no less a devil for that, no not
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Any less the black man who
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Bit my pretty heart in two.
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I was ten when they buried you.
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At twenty I tried to die
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And get back, back, back to you.
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I thought even the bones would do.
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But they pulled me out of the sack,
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And they stuck me together with glue.
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And then I knew what to do.
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I made a model of you,
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A man with a Meinkampf look
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And a love of the rack and the screw.
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And I said I do, I do.
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So daddy, I'm finally through.
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The black telephone's off at the root,
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The voices just can't worm through.
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If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
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The vampire who said he was you
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And drank my blood for a year,
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Seven years, if you want to know.
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Daddy, you can lie back now.
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There's a stake in your fat black heart
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And the villagers never liked you.
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They are dancing and stamping on you.
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They always knew it was you.
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Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
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