A vase of flowers

The vase is white and would be a cylinder

If a cylinder were wider at the top than at the bottom.

The flowers are red, white and blue.

All contact with the flowers is forbidden.

The white flowers strain upward

Into a pallid air of their references,

Pushed slightly by the red and blue flowers.

If you were going to be jealous of the flowers,

Please forget it.

They mean absolutely nothing to me.

—John Ashbery (Collected poems)