Mixed
Apologies
So sorry,
truly, I'm so
sorry
for what I am
not sure.....but
perhaps
I'm not being
culturally polite
so sorry
truly, I'm so
sorry.
Appropriate
behaviour here
is not the same
as there,
where I come
from,
and perhaps
I am offending...so...
so sorry,
truly, I'm so
sorry.
And on the
other side of things
that would be
rude at home
but here it is
not
I'll try not to
be offended
I'll try to get
my feelings
and brain to
the point
where I am at
ease
and no one
needs to keep on saying
So sorry,
truly, I'm so
sorry.
It is quite
likely
after I've
learnt
all these new
ways
I'll go back
home
and forget to
apply
what I've tried
to lose over here
so a new round
of apologies
will need to
come out
yes...so sorry
truly, I'm so
sorry.
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When in Rome -- Frank Frazetta
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do” is a proverb meaning that it is advisable to follow the conventions of the area in which you are residing or visiting. It apparently originates from ca. 390, though the details differ. In one version, St. Monica of Hippo and her son Augustinus (St. Augustine) were planning to visit Rome but found out that Saturday was observed there as a fast day, though in Mediolanum (Milano), where they lived, it was not, so they consulted Aurelius Ambrosius (St. Ambrose), the bishop of Milano, who told them, “Si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre; si fueris alibī, vīvitō sīcut ibī (“If you should be in Rome, live in the Roman manner; if you should be elsewhere, live as they do there”). In some versions, this exchange took place when Augustinus was leaving Roma in order to take up a position in Milano as professor of rhetoric at the imperial court in 384. A few years later Augustinus gave similar advice: “Romanum venio, ieiuno Sabbato; hic sum, non ieiuno: sic etiam tu, ad quam forte ecclesiam veneris, eius morem serva, si cuiquam non vis esse scandalum nec quemquam tibi” (When I go to Rome I fast on Saturday, but here I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whatever church you attend, if you do not want to give or receive scandal). (Sometimes the 2nd phrase is attributed to Ambrosius rather than to Augustinius , but he encouraged emperors Flavius Gratianus Augustus, Flavius Valentinianus Augustus, and Flavius Theodosius Augustus to persecute the empire’s still-pagan subjects.) The phrase appeared in English in the 1599 play, “The Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women of Abington” by Henry Porter (who may have contributed comic scenes to Christopher Marlowe’s “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus”). One of Porter’s characters declaimed, “Nay, I hope, as I have temperance to forbear drink, so have I patience to endure drink: Ile do as company dooth; for when a man doth to Rome come, he must do as there is done.” Like Marlowe, Porter was stabbed to death, but in Porter’s case it was by another of Philip Henslowe's playwrights John Day, who collaborated with such luminaries as William Haughton, Thomas Dekker, Richard Hathwaye,Wentworth Smith, and Henry Chettle (who had also collaborated with Porter). Day was involved in the production of at least 22 plays, but Porter only had the one which has survived. A much more significant writer, Robert Burton, published “The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up,” in 1621, in which he edited St. Ambrose’s remark to read, “When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done, puritans with puritans, papists with papists.”
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