[Verse 1] Branches on their shoulders, a forest learns to walk, Birnam timber marching while the sentries never talk, Ten thousand bodies hidden under borrowed, trembling leaves, Dunsinane is watching but the watchman half believes. Green disguise is holding, step by careful step they climb, A woodland built from soldiers, ticking closer, out of time, But costumes were for witches' words, not men who mean to win, The plain is close, the thicket's thin, the truth wants to begin. [Chorus] "Throw your leafy screens down, Show like those you are" — Malcolm gives the order: drop the camouflage this far. No more borrowed branches, no more hiding what you bring, Strip the forest costume, let the honest soldier swing his blade into the open, where the lying banners fall, No screens left to hide behind, no masks, no walls at all. [Verse 2] A "battle" means a division — a chunk of marching men, Old Siward takes the vanguard, steady now as he was then, His son stands at his shoulder, young and eager, unafraid, Malcolm trusts the father's patience and the courage that he's made. While Macbeth hides in towers, counting prophecies like gold, These two march into daylight, nothing slippery, nothing sold, No riddles, no illusions, just the order of the charge — Compare the weasel-whispers Macbeth trusted, thin and large. [Chorus] "Throw your leafy screens down, Show like those you are" — Malcolm gives the order: drop the camouflage this far. No more borrowed branches, no more hiding what you bring, Strip the forest costume, let the honest soldier swing. [Bridge] Harbingers are signals, signs of what is coming near, Clamorous means deafening, a sound that drowns the fear, Macduff cries, "give them all breath, make every trumpet speak," Blood and death are riding on the noise the soldiers seek. No whisper now, no murmur, no dagger in the dark, Just brass and iron shouting till the castle hears the spark, The quiet plotting's over, every secret meets the air, The battle that was hidden stands undressed and fully bare. [Verse 3] Siward, weathered general, says it plain and rough and true: "Let us be beaten, if we cannot fight" — nothing left to do but drop the leaves, the lies, the long pretending Scotland wore, Open ground, no cover now, just tired eyes and war. Every mask since Act One has been cracking, inch by inch, Lady's scrubbing hands, the Thane's false smile without a flinch, Now the branches scatter and the real shapes start to show, The trumpets speak the ending that the leaves could never know. [Chorus] "Throw your leafy screens down, Show like those you are" — Malcolm gives the order: drop the camouflage this far. No more borrowed branches, no more hiding what you bring, Strip the forest costume, let the honest soldier sing.
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