I could not sleep in the hotel next to steppes.
The star of hope revealed the midnight
I heard sounds behind the wall.
I knocked on the wall for the first time.
Someone said: Be a dreamer!
I knocked on the wall for the second time.
The gentle voice said: Be a red romantic!
I knocked on the yellow wall for the third time.
The mysterious door opened in the wall.
And the blue Erl-king appeared.

He was romantic and dreamy – a gentleman
I spoke to him.
As a bird, the Erl-king took me on wings,
so that i could look at different walls.

The first wall, black, was the Berlin Wall.
I saw the ghosts of people who fell here.
They were drunken of the poetry of hope.

The second wall, red, was the Great Wall of China.
I saw the ghosts of farmers who worked near them.
They werd drunken of poetry of poetry of sublimity.

The third wall, yellow, belonged to the winter queen.
I saw the ghosts of arrested people and to ice frozen people
They were drunken of poetry of Romeo’s love.

The next wall, blue, belonged to the Erl-king.
I saw ghosts of seduced children.
They were drunken of poetry without feuds.

And the last wall was my wall.
It was made of diamonds and it has been broken down
because of my beauty, the marvellous beauty of dreams.

The fragments of diamonds have been left here and there.
The Erl-king wanted to take a diamond with him.
Everything is dissappeared.

I am back in the hotel room in the wasteland
and I am only bewitched of Erl-king’s dreams
that will never doze
but he watches like a falconer
or a shepherd with red sky
in the morning

– Paweł Markiewicz