Fog by Jaeho Choi explores themes of migration, memory, and identity through the image of a heavy fog rolling over Mellons Bay. The fog symbolizes uncertainty and emotional disconnection, mirroring the poet's experience navigating life in an unfamiliar land. Moments of cultural and familial memory are woven with reflections on language, loss, and belonging. The poem moves from a sense of heaviness and confusion to clarity and hope, ending with the rising sun as a symbol of renewal and the promise of future generations. Nature and personal memory intertwine to express the complexities of diaspora, and the strength found in moving forward.

English translation of poem:

A cloud, weary from its long journey across the sky,
sags under its swollen weight,
then settles, spreading over the sea.
It’s the hour when the awakened dawn passes Mellons Bay.

 Here, where flocks of white sheep live
in both sky and land
this is the land of long, white clouds.
And now the fog that blankets the sea
is drinking me in.

 Only when I step close enough does it reveal
the scenery just an inch ahead,
like each unfamiliar day
I faced without reason, without end.

 You- spreading white like flight
escaped my grasp so easily
Like as your coiled-up mother tongue,
rounded and sealed, never mine

 That winter night came late in the rain
a drunken father, staggering
leaning against an wall,
suddenly felt his distant away homeland

 What clings now to my brow
is not the damp of despair in the fog,
but the sweat shed by this life of mine,
worn and weary like the sea.

 A yellow-haired seabird shakes off
its heavy wings and takes flight.
Suddenly, I feel the heat
between water drops like fading regrets
that vanish one by one,
a dawn breaks, like childhood.

 The hunched old man pushing a cart disappears with the fog
the sun rises like a joy
bright as my son’s brilliant youth
It RISES, It RISES.

 -Summer in 2012

This project is funded by Arts Out East and Botany Town Centre. Supported by the Howick Local Board and Te Tuhi