Notes

• Overall: in translating to English, choices must be made about verb tense that are unspecified in the original. While Li Bai did die relatively young, my understanding is that this poem is from before that—so Du Fu is worried about what might be, not about what is. There is an ongoing theme of relating his worries over Li Bai to the story of Qu Yuan, a famous poet and scholar who drowned himself some centuries before, and whose story became entangled with the dragon boat festival. Without knowing the title, it is tempting to translate this poem as being about Qu Yuan, casting the death as having already (and definitely) happened. While I don't think that's true, it's useful to note that I didn't spot anything in the poem itself that prevents such a reading.

• Line 1: what I've translated here as "will not weep" is a phrase that does mean that in a general sense, but more literally means "swallow my voice" and occasionally seems to be about inability to write, either because of emotion or because of censorship. More often, from my reading of the dictionary and various commentary, it seems to refer to a state of grief that's so deep you can't weep (note that weeping and wailing was an expected part of funeral rites for those close to the deceased, so this has a cultural connotation that it doesn't have in mainstream Anglophone American culture).

  It's joined with "parted by death" with a word that means something like "already" or "soon". The second half is more obvious, which suggests the first half is in some way a comparison or contrast to "I am already weeping that life has separated us"; I'm torn between the interpretations "if you're dead I won't write poetry anymore", "if you're dead I'm going to be so sad I can't cry" and "I'm already weeping so hard I can't weep any harder."

• Line 2: I'm pretty sure the implication is supposed to be that he's worried his friend has fallen ill and died, but it might also be cursing the south to have disease, like "plague take the south"?

• Line 3: the word I've translated as "lost" can mean either "apart, separated, sliced away" or "dead". I couldn't find one that had quite the right set of meanings in English, but I think lost is pretty close.

• Line 4a: the original has the friend "(now / currently) (in / at / on / with / using / living near)" the nets. It is ambiguous whether the friend is using the net himself to fish (the lone fisherman was a popular image of a retired or exiled scholar), or whether he is being caught in the net, either metaphorically (as in being caught in political schemes) or literally (as in his body is being pulled from the river). Considering the resonance with Qu Yuan, I think we're supposed to see the possibility that the nets are fishing out his body, but I really struggled to get that and the possibility that he's the one using the net all in the same phrase.

• Line 4b: The feathered wings are a bit confusing, and the commentary I've been able to find hasn't helped. I think this is a euphemistic reference to dying. Daoist immortals traditionally rode on cranes (or sometimes turned into them), and so Daoist sages were sometimes said to be carried away by cranes when they died. Daoist immortals also are often described as having feathers, and "joining the immortals" is another euphemism for dying.

• Line 5: this one seems pretty obvious in terms of literal meaning: he's afraid of non-peace for the soul, and the journey can't be measured. Exactly how they relate, though, that's open to interpretation. Some of the commentaries see it as "if you showed up in my dreams because you're dead, then that's a very long journey, and so you must not be resting peacefully." If the ritual-reference interpretation of line 6 (see below) is correct, I wonder if it isn't worry that nobody will perform the correct rituals to bring his soul home, since the journey is so long.

• Line 6: I have no fucking clue what's going on here, so I've left it pretty literal. The Chinese commentaries seem to believe that this line relates to another poem which relates to a Chu ritual of leading the soul home after death. If I'm understanding the translation correctly, a priest/shaman/loved one would put a sort of soul-lure in a wicker basket and then walk backwards from the place of death to the person's home while verbally cajoling and guiding them along the way, and the other poem is basically a song that is what a person would have said to another person while doing this for them—scholarly commentary is divided on who, but if Google translated the commentary correctly, possibly Qu Yuan? Though now they think it was written for another king?? (Or possibly Qu Yuan thought it was for a poet and Google translate messed up subject and object again.) So I think this is a really roundabout way of saying that if Li Bei has died, Li Bei's soul is far from home, and he's worried his friend's afterlife journey might not be smooth.

• Line 7: Several of the commentaries seem to think that Du Fu is seeing his friend's face in the rafters, but I honestly don't understand where they're getting that. I read the poem as saying that Du Fu isn't or can't look at the image or reflection of something—maybe at his own reflection in a mirror, maybe at the moon, or maybe at the reflection of the moon on the water. Gazing at the bright moon and/or its reflection is a hugely common motif in the "my friend isn't here and I'm sad" genre of poetry, generally reflecting (heh) the idea that even if you're apart, at least both of you are looking at the same moon. So my interpretation is that even though the moon is bright, Du Fu can't look at it because he doesn't know if his friend is alive to look at it too.

• Line 8: There's a specific variety of dragon being invoked here, one that is (at least according to my dictionary) a sort of chaotic neutral god that can tame dangerous waters. So while other translations are like "the water is dangerous because it has monsters!" I think that's the exact opposite of what's going on here—I think Du Fu is upset because he doesn't have anything to send that would help.

  What I'm not sure about is how literal the waters are. Considering the context, it's entirely possible that an actual literal river is being a danger, perhaps because of running high and fast or perhaps because of flooding, and Du Fu is wishing he could literally calm the waters. It's possible that the dragon here is a symbolic invocation of the Emperor, and he's upset that he can't get the Emperor to end Li Bai's exile, and in that context the water could be literal or it could be a metaphor for politics. Possibly the dragon is a dragon boat, considering the Qu Yuan imagery. I initially translated this as "The water is so deep. The dragon boats are still looking"—Qu Yuan's body was not found for some time after his death. Or possibly the triplet and couplet aren't connected, and this should be read as "I can't help. We need a flood dragon".