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A Song for MacBeth

from No Signposts. by Anne Lister

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Inspired by Dorothy Dunnett's wonderful book "King Hereafter", rather than Shakespeare's Scottish Play.

lyrics

We stood at the crossroads in the moorland
Looking at the road that lay ahead
And the wind sang of the future still before us
And the bracken sobbed the praises of the dead
And if I’d truly known where we were going
If I’d known the journey and its end
I’d have turned around and walked the long miles homeward
But you can never have your chance again.

And looked at from where you are it seems easy
As if the journey moved in a straight line
As if each separate path on each clear pathway
Was somehow some great master plan of mine
And all the reasons formed some kind of pattern
Ambition, greed or overwhelming pride
And like a chess game of competing masters
There was some kind of strategy inside.

Instead it all was accidental
The landscaped changed around us as we walked
There were no signposts, there were no guidelines
Sometimes we were the hunters, then the stalked
And we were chasing shadows in the twilight
And the fiercest of them all were in our mind
And pulling back the curtains in the morning
We never knew for certain what we’d find.

But the craziest part of all this crazy story
Which maybe you’ve not seen yet, but you may
Is how time changes patterns and all colours
From white to black and every shade of grey
A hero can soon become a monster
There’s nothing that turns sour so fast as fame
And all the battles that were so hard of winning
Have all turned to defeat now all the same.

We stood at the crossroads …

credits

from No Signposts., released June 18, 2020
Bass - Ian Kearey. Scottish small pipes - Steafan Hannigan

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Anne Lister Wales, UK

Anne is best known for her song "Icarus", recorded and performed by a number of different singers, including Martin Simpson and Nic Jones. "Astrolabe" is her ninth solo album.

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