The Pleasures of the Door by Francis Ponge

This is my first Wellington Square Bookshop blog post!
Here is a poem about the satisfaction we get from doors (our new shop will feature doors). Translated very quickly by my friend Mackensie from Le French.

The Pleasures of the Door

Kings do not touch doors.

They don't have this happiness: to push in front of the self softly or roughly one of these great, large familiar panels, turning it towards himself, to put it back in place,-- to take hold of a door in his arms.

...The happiness of grabbing one of these high obstacles to a room by the stomach on the knot of porcelain with one's fist; from a rapid body to a body in which the step is detained for an instant, the eye opens and the entire body accommodates itself to its new apartment.

With a friendly hand he still holds it, before decidedly pushing and closing it, -- this which the click of the powerful but well-oiled spring agreeably assures him.