The poem
Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: to her I send the coffin of lightest wood. Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; it wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: it talks as I do when I grant admittance to hearts. It knows a French song about love, I sang it in autumn when I stopped as a tourist in Lateland and wrote my letters to morning.
A fine boat is that coffin carved in the coppice of feelings. I too drift in it downbloodstream, younger still than your eye. Now you are young as a bird dropped dead in March snow, now it comes to you, sings you its love song from France. You are light: you will sleep through my spring till it's over. I am lighter: in front of strangers I sing.
Nachtstrahl Rider
Am lichtesten brannte das Haar meiner Abendgeliebten:
ihr shick ich den Sarg aus dem leichtesten Holz.
(for the rest see Michael Hamburger trans., Poems of Paul Celan (N.Y.: Persea Books, 2002) 24.)