[Intro]
[Detuned piano strikes three descending notes as a wooden gavel answers from an empty chamber.]

[Verse 1]
[Clerk]
I opened Courtroom Number Four,
At six before the public door.
The judge’s water waited still;
The morning docket lined the sill.
His robe remained behind the chair,
No clerk could say why.
A cracked brass scale lay on the ground,
One empty pan still turning round.

[Chorus]
[Ensemble]
The courts beneath the boot—
The gavel gives no sound.
The robes hang like surrendered flags;
The scales are on the ground.

[Verse 2]
[Narrator]
At nine, the government appeared,
With forty binders, tabbed and cleared.
Its counsel spoke in measured tone:
“The executive must rule its own.”
The plaintiff held a worker’s file,
A badge, an oath, a service trial.
The courtroom clock struck ten, then two;
No seated judge came into view.

[Chorus]
[Ensemble]
The courts beneath the boot—
The gavel gives no sound.
The robes hang like surrendered flags;
The scales are on the ground.

[Post-Chorus]
[Ensemble]
When judgment asks permission
Before the truth is found,
The courts beneath the boot
Cannot keep a crown unbound.

[Instrumental Break]
[Contrabass strings drag the broken-scale motif through alternating three- and five-beat measures.]

[Bridge]
[Judge]
The missing judge came pale and slow.
He carried pages stained in red
And red the threat that he had red:
“Rule as we ask, or lose your name.
Your staff, your seat will bear the blame.”
He raised the cracked scale from the floor:
“A threat is not the law of war.”

[Breakdown]
[Narrator]
The lights go black.
The doors lock tight.
A siren cuts
The marble white.
The counsel smiles.
The cameras die.
The judge still lifts
The scale on high.

[Climax]
[Judge]
“I issue judgment in this room,
Not for the crown, not for the tomb.
The order stands restrained this day—”
A marshal tears the page away.

[Final Chorus]
[Ensemble]
The courts beneath the boot—
Now every hall resounds.
The gavel falls though power calls
For silence from the ground.

[Coda]
[Crowd]
A judgment may be broken,
A witness may be bound,
But courts beneath the boot
Teach the people where crowns are found.

[Outro]
[Narrator]
The injunction never reaches the clerk.
The cracked scale disappears into evidence.
Outside, thousands begin repeating
The final sentence the judge was not allowed to finish.