There’s an old hut standing, down by the river,
the most simplest there is in this state.
Where a hundred horses and men, at the miller,
shall fall into 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’s resting, he’ll listen and grin,
as the stones tell their stories while dancing.
*
He says, as rocks be dancing on bones,
that these men won’t be running no more;
they’ll chink and they’ll crink, like chimes of stones,
in honour of their funeral will roar.
*
And he says that his mill are alot like life:
an everlasting wrenching of fate.
As the screeching of cogwheels, of timber and strife,
will grind the finest flour of one’s passed away.
*
Lay down to sleep, you who’s lost and unsettled,
you won’t have to worry, road’s no longer narrow;
of all that have been and all lives that mettled,
the deathly dust is only left of the marrow.
*
Though some will come, like a trembling dance,
lastly arriving but more lighthearted than all.
If they be glistering pearly, in the evening’s glance,
wait only a while till they’ll tire and fall.
*
Perhaps the fallen will rise again in the spring.
The ghost’s been whispering up in the trees.
Them, who deceased and yesterday was milled,
next year might be swinging in the seed.
*
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.