[Verse 1] Great hall's lit, the lords are seated, cups go round, the toast completed. A knock, a whisper — a murderer, low and plain, says Banquo's down in a ditch, a dark red stain. But Fleance bolted, slipped the net, the heir got clean away, and that's a debt. Macbeth calls the killer his "nonpareil" — a fancy word meaning without equal, the best blade he's ever heard. [Chorus] There's a ghost in the king's own chair, nobody else can see him sitting there. Macbeth looks round and swears "the table's full," though one man's missing — and his mind's the one he'll pull. [Verse 2] He turns to greet his seat, and there it waits: Banquo, pale and bloodied, settling old debates. He points, he stammers, the lords just stare, wondering why their king's arguing with the air. "Thou canst not say I did it," he begs the shade, "Never shake thy gory locks" — don't show the blade. Only he can see the gashes, the stare, the frown, while twenty lords watch their monarch crumble down. [Chorus] There's a ghost in the king's own chair, nobody else can see him sitting there. Macbeth looks round and swears "the table's full," though one man's missing — and his mind's the one he'll pull. [Verse 3] Lady Macbeth steps in cool and quick, calls it a fit, an old familiar trick, tells him sharp and low, "Are you a man?" Shames him back to standing while the feast still ran. The shape returns — Macbeth shouts "Avaunt!" — meaning go, "and quit my sight!" — and the chair sits empty, finally so. She turns the room, no bowing, no delay: "Stand not upon the order of your going" — away. [Bridge] He mutters to the dark, half to himself alone: "It will have blood, they say, blood will have blood" — old murders talk, the stones have always known, augurs — the omens, the signs — read like a flood. "But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in to saucy doubts and fears" — boxed inside his sin. [Verse 4] Tomorrow, betimes — that means early, first light — he'll find the weird sisters, demand to know his plight. He clocks one lord who never showed tonight: Macduff stayed home, and that is not sitting right. "I am in blood stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er" — no bridge behind him, just the water and the shore, so he wades on forward, deeper than before. [Verse 5] The servants whisper, sweeping up the wine, the candles guttering down the empty line. A throne built high on borrowed, bloody ground, can't hold a king whose courage can't be found. Every shadow now wears Banquo's face, every empty seat becomes his resting place. The crown sits heavy, heavier than before — a kingdom built on murder always wants for more. [Outro] There's a ghost in the king's own chair, a crown unraveling, right out there. One empty name marked down tonight — Macduff's absence lights the hunt, the next dark flight.
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