There’s an old hut standing, down by the river,
the simplest there is in this state.
Where a hundred horses and men, at the miller,
have fallen to piles of bones by the gate.
*
The miller, he’s old and knows how to win,
and he’ll never get weary of grinding.
When he is resting, he’ll listen and grin,
as the stones sing their songs that be rising.
*
He says, as rocks be dancing on bones,
these men won’t be running no more.
They’ll chink and they’ll crink, like chimes of stones,
honouring the mill and the lore.
*
And he says that his mill are similar to life,
like the everlasting wrenching of fate.
As the screeching of cogwheels, of timber and strife,
aleays will grind the flour so fine, of those who passed away.
*
You lay down to sleep, who’s lost and unsettled,
still your worries, road’s no longer narrow.
Of all that have been, all lives that have mettled,
by the dust of death, the only thing left, of the marrow.
*
Though some will come, in a trembling dance,
lastly arriving, more lighthearted than all.
They be glistering pearly, in the evening’s glance,
wait only a while till they’ll tire and fall.
*
And maybe the fallen will rise again in the spring,
the long lost be whispering up in the trees.
Them, whose deceased and yesterday was milled,
next year might swing in the seeds.
*
But them stones will go on, till everything’s gone,
and the dustbowls are billowing high as the gate.
And the miller, he says, that the bonegrinders song,
is the most lighthearted ever been sung in the state.