Kings never touch doors.
They’re not familiar with this happiness: to push, gently or roughly before you one of these great, friendly panels, to turn towards it to put it back in place—to hold a door in your arms.
The happiness of seizing one of these tall barriers to a room by the porcelain knob of its belly; this quick hand-to-hand, during which your progress slows for a moment, your eye opens up and your whole body adapts to its new apartment.
With a friendly hand you hold on a bit longer, before firmly pushing it back and shutting yourself in—of which you are agreeably assured by the click of the powerful, well-oiled latch.
From: https://wfupress.wfu.edu/poem-of-the-week/the-pleasures-of-the-door-francis-ponge-poem-of-the-week/
Date: 1942 (original in French); 1994 (translation in English)
By: Francis Ponge (1899-1988)
Translated by: Charles Kenneth (C K) Williams (1936-2015)
From Troubles of The World 