Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems  



Like the Miller Grinds the Wheat

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1968 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1996.


We don't touch that machine
Cause once you get your finger in
It will swallow you complete,
It will strip you to the skin,
It will grind you like the miller grinds the wheat,
Like the miller,
And it turns you out a corpse,
Or a killer.

Get that draft card in your hand
And you've started down the chute
That will change you from a man
To a nothing in a suit.
It will grind you like the miller grinds the wheat,
Like the miller,
And it turns you out a corpse,
Or a killer.

It's a well made machine
And it works with magic skill
To turn glowing human souls
Into plastic set to kill.
It will grind you like a miller grinds the wheat,
Like the miller,
And it turns you out a corpse,
Or a killer.

It is run for the rich
And it swallows up the poor
And it turns them into contracts
With the dividends secure.
And it grinds you like the miller grinds the wheat--
As of old.
And the corpses are of cold,
Solid gold.


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- [none]

Other place(s) where the music to this song appears:
---- Broadside No. 90 (April 1968)
---- Broadside, Vol. III (New York: Broadside Magazine, 1970), p. 47

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- Malvina Reynolds (2007)
---- Cassandra Records CS-50 (7-inch 45 rpm disc, 1969; flip side "It Isn't Nice")


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This page copyright 2006 by Charles H. Smith and Nancy Schimmel. All rights reserved.

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