Lovely Lines Poem by Margaret Alice Second

When Madame la Pompadour saw me, she zoomed in
admonishing: You are NOT to read or listening to your
earphones - Yes, Your Majesty, I meekly acquiesced
and took my place as far away as possible from the strict
Madame and the rest of the Royalty, kept my delicious
book firmly closed - I'm reading "Making Money" by Terry
Pratchett and reached the bit about the cabinet that has
not been designed by a girl between four and eleven as it
contains all colours except pink - the hallmark of youthful
femininity - and started to study the Departmental Diary
issued to all officials, delighted with the daily meditation
or maxim at the top of each page: ‘Beauty is not what you
see but what you dream' - yuck, say my colleagues, how
syrupy, yum, says my own mind, how just like I feel; then
‘Kindness is to love people more than they deserve' - there,
now I can love my colleagues again, even if they abhor the
words that make me glad, ‘The true measure of a person is
how he treats someone who can do him no good', perfect,
now I shall be kind to my colleagues who cannot recognise
the beauty in these lovely lines…