Large Fierce Mammal

In this screen capture taken from amazingly detailed Renaissance surveillance footage, it would appear the man on the ground was insistent on taking the matter too far.

In a recent telephone conversation with my Esteemed Friend Gary Carbone, we spoke of matters that included the taking on of students, and the choosing of training partners. Specifically, the filtering of those who truly want to know from those who simply want to look as though they do, and how one may come to find that even a poor training partner can be better than no training partner at all.

The poem that is the point for today grew out of that conversation, and if I don’t miss my guess, any serious practitioner of a combative Art who also counts among his or her skills the Art of Teaching, will find some of their own Truth in what follows. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you …

The Apprentice

By LFM

A lad asked me to teach him once,
The secrets of the Blade.
He said that he would learn to fence
If I would deign to aid.

I heard his plea, then sat him down
And spoke my simple rule –
That he I name “apprentice”
Must renounce the badge of “fool”.

He would keep two things most secret,
As his life to guard the same –
The first was what he learned from me,
The other was my name.

“But!” he cried, “To name you
“Would put glory on your head!”
I fixed him with my gaze a while,
Then this is what I said.

“Of all the things you’ll learn from me
“Let this now stand as first –
“If your name be now ‘Apprentice’,
“Its preamble will be ‘Worst’.”

“And so you shall not speak my name
“Until I grant the right.
“When that day comes depends upon
“How soon you see the light.”

“For now, I would not have my name
“Connected with your ‘skills’.
“This is no game that you would learn –
“This is an Art that kills!”

“When I expunge the title “Worst”
“‘T will mean you’ve come to be
“Both true reflection of this Art
“And of your Teacher – Me.”

“When your soul and blade together
“Honour Life, and NOT the kill,
“Your lips need never speak my name.
“Your every action will.”