Oh, Nothing

Prediction is very difficult,

Especially about the future,

Niels Bohr cracked, and yet no one noticed

He’d made a prediction, saying that.

Taken as an axiom, his claim

Predicted prediction was never

Going to get any easier,

So long as it must be successful—

That is, naming rightly what comes next.

Anticipation is the engine

Of anything that goes by meaning.

Anything beyond experience

Could be true so long as it’s unseen,

But it must forecast experience

Once in a while, to mean anything,

Which is why lies stay concentrated

In the field of predicting the past.

A future’s so mean to predictions.