GloPoWriMo Day 8: The Knightly Art of Combat

I'm a HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) practitioner, studying German longsword with occasional forays into rapier and side-sword. Tonight, we were revising concepts and terms for a level assessment next week, and the subject of fühlen, or 'feeling', came up. It also found its way into my technical jargon poem for the night, since I was way too tired to do more than grab the first thing that swam into my run-over brain and try and write something out of it.

THE KNIGHTLY ART OF COMBAT

It’s all in the fühlen, my longsword instructor tells us.

Fühlen - feeling. The first thing you learn, the last thing you master.

Two swords clash - when steel meets steel

You know: whether to press in, whether to disengage

How to counter, how not to counter, will you be vor or will you be indes

Steel transmits intent, a metallic telepath which only experience

Can teach you to read.

Here we are, bandying invisible word-shaped swords:

A stab forward  – You never listen to what I tell you -
A quick feint – If you didn’t always nag I wouldn’t shut off all the time

In the clash, words against words in a bind

It’s fühlen which dictates the next move:

To be vor might cause injury to one party

In indes, no one has the superior attack

I disengage.

There is too much at stake.

I lay down my arms and call truce

For us to find common ground.

**Vor: German, meaning ‘before’, a longsword term denoting first initiative for the attack, taking the offense.

***Indes: German, meaning ‘in between’ where an action is executed the same time as the opponent’s action and neither fighter has the offensive or strong attack.