Farewell, year 2025.
How heavy, how frantic,
you stumble to the end, lame in your going.
Dust boils up,
the rim of heaven darkens,
like a ring of stars slipping out of orbit.
The White House burns its lights through the night,
the Constitution lies open
like a dog-eared book of prayers,
pages torn out, rewritten,
the margins packed with cramped annotations.
On Wall Street the screens glow green,
a whole sea of numbers,
yet they cannot light the hands that count coins
in front of the empty supermarket shelves.

The golden gates are still held high,
tired immigrants stand in line by the wire fence—
someone shuts his shop for a day
and lets the empty street speak for him;
someone stands mute with a cardboard sign:
“If we were not here,
how many breakfasts could this country cook each morning?”
Grey-clad officers form ranks,
rubber bullets like winter fruit
give the children their first lesson in civics
in the cold wind.

Look—“No Kings” is written on the flag,
heaving above the human tide,
from San Francisco to Alabama,
from the Rust Belt to the cornfields;
each scrap of cardboard covered with a different anger,
all shouting the same sentence:
“No kings. Citizens only.”
An old white-haired woman lifts her granddaughter
up onto the lamp post
so she can see the end of the march—
it is not victory,
only the backs of those who refuse to kneel.

The government stalls;
the great wheel skids for forty-three days.
Chains are thrown across the doors
of the National Museum of American History;
the security guard sits on the steps
as if sitting on his own impounded wages.
In the empty halls
relics of war, photographs of the civil rights years,
the feathered headdress of an Indian,
the iron shackles of a slave,
face one another in the unguarded dark:
“Why are you here?”
“Because humankind always remembers too late.”
A farmer in Iowa stares
at the weather website gone dark;
a nurse in New Mexico clocks in for the night shift
and receives no pay.
In the Metro station of the capital
a saxophone wheezes out
a hoarse Star-Spangled Banner,
the tune breaks off in mid-phrase, damp with tears;
passers-by stop,
but the eyes under their hat brims look far away:
not toward an enemy nation,
but toward the rent bill, the medical bill,
toward the last egg
in the refrigerator.

The distant wars have never gone out.
The night sky over Gaza
is torn open by white light;
Syria, Ukraine, Yemen—
those names on the map
that the media have almost forgotten—
still bleed under the satellite clouds.
On the Pentagon’s screens
each target is marked as a neat blue dot,
so clean to the eye,
so civilized to the ear;
only the cry of children in the refugee camp
stubbornly crosses oceans and time zones.

Artificial intelligence
pours back like a tide into every room;
the algorithm,
an invisible petty clerk,
rummages with ease through every breath
behind the phone and the camera.
Somebody loses his job overnight,
somebody strikes it rich overnight;
more people hand over
their faces, their voices, their fingerprints, their memories
to nameless servers—
there is no soul there,
only air-conditioning and fans.

Look, a cardinal (紅衣主教)
perches at the window as it did ten years ago,
snow falling on its head
as if conferring the red cap.
It does not read the news,
knows nothing of elections;
it only lifts that small flame of color
in an abandoned backyard,
to remind human beings:
even in the worst of years
there is still a certain red
that refuses to turn to grey.

Wildfire over Denver
stains the sky red;
a Florida hurricane
flips over trailer parks
and the last small yards of the retired;
the glaciers of Alaska go on retreating,
like an old man with a stick
backing into a dark room.
The speed at which the earth is heated
is faster than any debate at the conference table.
A teenager holds up a sign on campus:
“When I grow up,
will there still be a world to grow up in?”
The teacher bows her head
over the roll-call sheet,
not daring to look up at him.

Black people are still demanding an answer
for the weight of a single knee;
Asian faces are shoved in the subway station;
a transgender person paces back and forth
at the public restroom door;
on the land of the first peoples
there is a new row of wind turbines,
and one less river where the ribbon fish once swam.
This country calls itself
“a city on the hill,”
yet often forgets the shadow at the foot of the hill,
where the first to arrive live,
and the last to be seen.

And yet, the world is not all shadow.
In church basements and mosque courtyards,
behind synagogues
where the food banks stand,
in the worn-out gyms of community centers,
every corner is piled high
with donated cans and winter coats.
An unemployed engineer
teaches the elderly to use smartphones;
a family under deportation order
learns English there;
teenagers tuck protest slogans
between the pages
of their math homework in the same notebook.
None of them is great,
yet inch by inch
they push the world back from the brink.

Alas, America cannot become a New Jerusalem,
but neither has it fallen
into the final Babylon.
The Capitol dome still stands,
only the cracks
a little more than before;
the flag still snaps in the wind,
only now someone
has added a slip of paper to that wind:
“Please remember,
we too are a corner of this flag.”

Farewell, 2025.
This year has taught thrift,
and also taught speech;
has exposed the old tricks of power,
and shown, too, new courage in ordinary lives.
Someone beats a drum in Washington Square;
someone spray-paints verses on the ruins of Detroit;
someone in a Montana snow-night
lights a porch lamp
for a neighbor who has been deported.
Let this year carry off
all that ought to be carried off:
arrogant oaths, hollow slogans,
hatred in the name of faith,
plunder in the name of freedom;
and let it leave
what ought to be left:
the footprints that went out into the street,
that single “no” vote in court
that refused to bend,
the tired yet gentle smile
of the nurse coming off the night shift.

Farewell, 2025.
May the next calendar, when it is turned,
still find children in schoolyards
reading Whitman aloud,
not reciting evacuation routes;
may everyone who flees the wars
and reaches this shore
find at least one bed
without fear for tomorrow;
may this land,
after so many lies,
still pick up from some corner
a small piece of truth—
even if it is no bigger
than a mustard seed.

Hallelujah.
May psalms and blues rise together
above the mist of the Mississippi,
to meet the bells
over the District of Columbia;
and may there, in the shadow
of the Statue of Liberty (自由女神),
there still be someone
who leaves a key
for the next generation,
so that one morning
they can open that door
and say to the sky:
“Hello, new year—
please be more human
than 2025.”

別了，2025年！
何等沈重，何等倉皇，2025步履蹣跚！
塵霧翻湧，天際黯淡，如同失速的星環。
白宮燈火徹夜未眠，憲法像被翻舊的祈禱書，
一頁頁被撕下、重寫、加註密密麻麻的旁白。
華爾街螢幕綠成一片海，卻照不亮超市貨架前
那雙計算硬幣的手掌。

金色門扉仍舊高舉，
疲憊的移民列隊於鐵絲網前——
有人關店一天，讓空街替他們說話；
有人舉牌沈默，寫著：
「如果沒有我們，這個國家還能早晨做幾份早餐？」
一個才六歲的華人孩子，
懷揣著美國護照被遣返中國，
「美利堅是白人的天堂，
美利堅不需要低端人口！」
灰衣人列隊，用口罩遮面，
橡膠子彈飛過冰冷的天空
給孩子們上第一堂公民課。

請看，「不要國王」旗幟在人海中起伏，
從舊金山到阿拉巴馬，
從鐵鏽帶到玉米田，
一張張紙板寫滿不相同的憤怒，
卻喊出一樣的句子：
「不要國王，只要公民。」
一位白髮老婦把孫女扶上路燈，
讓她看見隊伍的盡頭——
那並非勝利，只是不肯跪下的背影。

政府停擺，巨輪失速四十三天。
國家歷史博物館的大門加上鎖鏈，
保安坐在台階上，像坐在自己被扣押的工資上。
空蕩蕩的走廊里，戰爭遺物、民權照片、
印第安人的羽冠、黑奴的鐵鍊，
在無人照看的黑暗裡彼此對視：
「你們為何在這裡？」
「因為人類總是記得太晚。」

艾奧瓦的農夫對著關掉的氣象網站發呆，
新墨西哥的護士按時上夜班，卻收不到薪水。
首都地鐵站裡，一支薩克斯管
吹出沙啞的《星條旗，永不落》
曲調未成淚沾襟，
行人停下，帽沿下的眼睛卻望向遠方：
那遠方不是敵國，而是房租單、醫療賬單、
是冰箱里最後一顆雞蛋。

遠方的戰火從未熄滅。
加薩的夜空被白光撕開，
敘利亞、烏克蘭、也門，
地圖上那些被媒體遺忘的國名，
仍在衛星雲圖下失血。
五角大樓的螢幕上，炸點標成一粒粒藍色的點，
看來潔淨，聽來文明，
只有難民營中孩子的哭聲
頑固地穿過海洋與時差。

人工智能如潮水倒灌進每一間屋子，
算法像看不見的官吏，
在手機與監控鏡頭後面
輕易翻檢每一次呼吸。
有人一夜之間失業，
有人一夜之間暴富，
更多人把自己的臉、聲音、指紋和記憶
交給了無名的服務器——
那裡沒有靈魂，只有冷氣和風扇。

請看，一隻紅衣主教
仍如十年前一樣，停在窗前。
雪落在它頭頂，像為它授予紅帽。
它不讀新聞，不懂選舉，
只在廢棄的後院舉起一點火焰般的顏色，
提醒人類：
即使在最壞的年份，依然有某種顏色，
在白雪中拒絕變色。

丹佛山火燒紅天空，佛州颶風
掀翻拖車公園與退休老人最後的庭院；
阿拉斯加冰川繼續後退，
像一個老人拄著拐杖退進黑暗房間。
地球被加熱的速度，比會議桌上的辯論更快。
有少年在校園裡舉牌：
「等我長大，還有世界可長大嗎？」
老師低頭整理點名簿，
不敢抬頭看他。

黑人仍在為一條膝蓋的重量討說法，
亞裔在地鐵站裡被推搡，
跨性別者在公廁門口來回徘徊，
原住民的土地上多了一排風力發電機，
卻少了一條還有游魚的河流。
這個國家將自己稱為「山巔之城」，
卻常常忘記山腳下那片陰影，
那裡住著最早來的人與最後被看見的人。

然而，美利堅並非只有陰影籠罩。
教堂的地下室，清真寺的院子，
猶太會堂後方的食物銀行、
社區中心破舊的體育館，
每一處都堆滿捐來的罐頭和冬衣。
失業的工程師在那裡教老人使用手機，
被驅逐的移民在那裡學習英文，
十幾歲的孩子把抗議標語
與數學作業夾在同一本筆記本里。
他們誰都不偉大，
卻一點一點把世界推離深淵。

嗚呼，美利堅做不了新耶路撒冷，
美利堅正在淪為巴比倫。
國會圓頂雖然矗立，
裂縫比從前更加明顯；
星條旗依然獵獵作響，
有人在風中加了一張紙條：
「請記得，我們也是這面旗的一角。」

別了，2025年！
這一年教人學會節儉，也學會發聲；
教人見識權力的舊把戲，
也看見平凡人的新勇氣。
有人在華盛頓廣場敲起鼓，
有人在底特律的廢墟塗鴉詩句，
有人在蒙大拿的雪夜
替被遣返的鄰居點上一盞門燈。

讓這一年帶走該帶走的一切：
傲慢的宣誓、空洞的口號、
以信仰之名的仇恨，以自由之名的掠奪；
也讓它留下該留下的：
走上街頭的腳印，
法庭上那個不肯妥協的「反對票」，
醫院裡護士夜班後疲憊卻仍溫柔的一笑。

別了，2025年！
願下一個日曆翻開時，
孩子仍能在校園裡朗讀惠特曼，
而不是背誦撤離路線；
願每一位逃離戰火抵達此地的人
都能找到一張不用擔心明天的床；
願這片土地在經歷了太多謊言之後，
還能從某個角落拾起一枚真實——
哪怕像一粒芥菜種那麼小。

哈里路亞，
願詩篇與藍調一同升起，
在密西西比河霧氣之上，
與哥倫比亞特區的鐘聲相遇；
但願在自由女神的影子里，
還有人為下一代留下一把鑰匙，
讓他們在某個清晨，
推開那扇門，對著天空說：
「你好，新的一年——
美利堅，美利堅
請比2025，更像人間。」