Your chess pieces have learned to think and just jump off the board.
Wolfgang Niedeggen, BAP, “Zehnter Juni”

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I’m sitting in a hotel room in Hamburg. Flicking through the channels. Stopping at a recent live performance by BAP, with a Wolfgang Niedeggen looking as old as I feel, playing the songs I danced to in the early eighties. They were songs of longing, full of energy and conviction, always with a great sense of justice, straight on, jraaduss. With a very distinct sense of what is right and what is wrong.

I am watching as he announces a song that he wrote following the huge demonstration in Bonn of 10th June 1982. A song, he says, that today is as current as it was more than 40 years ago. Think Ukraine, says he.

You could add: think Gaza, think Sudan, think Democratic Republic of Congo, think Afghanistan, think Haiti, think Syria, think Myanmar. Nearly 350 million people around the world are experiencing the most extreme forms of hunger right now. Of those, nearly 49 million people are on the brink of famine, says the US World Food Programme. They add: Conflict is the number one cause.

I find it hard to watch the man-mind misery where people are, for no reason, used as pawns, when they could all live in peace with each other. Niedeggen is right: we need to jump off the board and stop allowing those in power to use us as their disposable instruments.

I also find it hard, and sad, to see, today, a lack of energy and conviction we had when we were in Boon in 1982 and when Niedeggen first sang 10th of June. We need to develop our sense of justice and ensure that nobody who plans atrocities of any kind to whomever wherever and whenever, will be able to count on us. Plant uns bloß nicht bei Euch ein! We won’t be any longer your chess pieces.

While I am in Hamburg, collecting my Marathon Bag for tomorrow’s race I won’t be running, Pádraig is out in town, having breakfast served to his table in Bewley’s on Grafton Street.

I have had plantar fasciitis, an inflammation of the fibrous tissue (plantar fascia) along the bottom of my foot, for the last few months. At some stage, I could hardly walk. While it has been getting better lately, it didn’t get well enough to allow me to train properly, never mind to run 42.2k tomorrow.

So, I decided not to run this race but to support my three friends from Ireland who had decided to run it with me this year.

While I will be supporting them, I am also so jealous of them. There is nothing that compares to the buzz of a marathon morning, the hours on the road, the conversations, the determination to get over the finishing line, the sense of achievement.

Another time.

BAP sings in the dialect of Cologne. Their website shows the translation into main stream German.

Here is a live performance version of the song from 1983.

And here is the translation into English of the BAP song Zehnter Juni, 10th July.

Tenth of June

Just don’t make me part of your plans,

I saw through you, and now

I know I’m not on the wrong track.

I have absolutely nothing got to do with your logic,

Why you have done whatever wherever, and why you still plan to do whatever

Why it is that your walking over dead bodies.

Because what you call logical, I call perverse,

Your entire value system too.

I break out in a sweat over every word you say

And if you are quiet, then too.

What you call “morality” is a load of baloney for me,

What you call “normal” is too

You have discreetly squandered your ideals like a used tissue.

Are you blinkered blind, like old warhorses are?

Callous or just – unscrupulous?

Just don’t make me part of your plans,

I saw through you, and now

I know I’m not on the wrong track.

I have absolutely nothing got to do with your logic,

Why you have done whatever wherever, and why you still plan to do whatever

Why it is that your walking over dead bodies.

You pinstripe desk slickers, listen up,

No matter where you hide:

The species is dying out, your sending, like puppets,

as mine dogs forward.

Your chess pieces have learned to think

And just jump off the board,

No more blindly following till just carcasses are left,

Try for yourself what dirt tastes like!

We’re not there yet, but for some time now

We are becoming more and more every day – more and more.

Just don’t make us part of your plans,

We saw through you, and now

We know we’re not on the wrong track.

We have absolutely nothing got to do with your logic,

With what you once lied, wanted to lie about

And all you’re already lying about.

Zehnter Juni

Plant mich bloß nicht bei euch ein,

Seit ich euch durchschaut hab,

Weiß ich, dass ich nicht auf dem allerfalschsten Dampfer bin.

Ich hab mit eurer Logik nichts am Hut,

Wieso ihr was wo getan habt und noch vorhabt,

Weshalb über Leichen geht.

Denn was ihr logisch nennt, das nenn ich pervers,

Eure ganze Wertigkeit auch.

Mir bricht der Schweiß bei jedem Wort von euch aus

Und wenn ihr still seid, dann auch.

Was ihr „Moral“ nennt, das ist für mich Krampf,

Was ihr „normal“ nennt, das auch,

Eure Ideale habt ihr diskret verschlampt wie ein gebrauchtes Tempotuch.

Seid ihr scheuklappenblind, wie’s alte Schlachtrösser sind,

Abgestumpft oder bloß – skrupellos?

Plant mich bloß nicht bei euch ein,

Seit ich euch durchschaut hab,

Weiß ich, dass ich nicht auf dem allerfalschsten Dampfer bin.

Ich hab mit eurer Logik nichts am Hut,

Wieso ihr was wo getan habt und noch vorhabt,

Weshalb über Leichen geht.

Ihr Nadelstreifen-Schreibtischtäter, hört zu,

Egal, wo ihr euch versteckt:

Die Art stirbt aus, die marionettengleich ihr

Als Minenhunde vorschickt.

Eure Schachfiguren haben denken gelernt

Und springen einfach vom Brett,

Bis zum Kadaver wird jetzt nicht mehr pariert,

Probiert doch selbst, wie Dreck schmeckt!

Noch ist es nicht so weit, doch seit einiger Zeit

Werden wir Tag für Tag mehr – immer mehr.

Plant mich bloß nicht bei euch ein,

Seit ich euch durchschaut hab,

Weiß ich, dass ich nicht auf dem allerfalschsten Dampfer bin.

Ich hab mit eurer Logik nichts am Hut,

Mit dem, was ihr mal gelogen, lügen wollt

Und dem, was ihr jetzt schon alles lügt.