Passage: Cross-Purposes
Cross-Purposes
What I am is built: concrete and steel. I defy gravity. I am what every athlete wants: to remain at the apex of the leap, up in the air. And yet I am useful, too: cars, trucks, people, even trains make their way across my broad back. Swallows and ospreys nest in my trusses.
What I am is motion. I am water, and I am older than anything else you know. No human built me. I am gravity’s best friend; I pool and flow wherever gravity takes me. I am the blood flowing in the runner’s chest, and I catch everything: from the hills, the mountains. It all washes down through me.
What you are is an accident, what happens to rain when rain gives in to Earth’s gravitational pull. You are some tears dribbling from a mountain’s eye, running down the pavements of small towns, into the cities, to the sea. You are the path of least resistance.
What I am is power. You, of course, have none: you are a static lump, an artifact slowly decaying. But my regal flow nourishes grasses, permits empires to rise. Those who made you will break you, in time, replacing you with yet another clumsy structure. I have seen. I know.
“Clumsy”? Being rebuilt makes me a friend of time, does it not? And it means that I have siblings—those “clumsy” structures, my sisters and brothers. We stitch across the rip you make. We are steel thread to the human needle. We bind you up. We sew you.
And I sow into you; in every cranny of your superstructure my vapors cling. They bring out your softness, your rust. Boast your best, and boast better yet. I am listening to the bright hum of the wind in your wires. Because I am, above all else, patient. I will wait for you.
ospreys: large birds
How does the similar construction of the sentence in line 1 and the sentence in line 8 contribute to the meaning of the poem?
- AIt introduces the intended permanence of the structure and the ever-changing fluidity of the water.
- BIt shows that the structure can bridge the gap caused by the water.
- CIt suggests that the structure has more limitations than the water.
- DIt contrasts the stability of the structure with the instability of the water.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The answer is (A)
The question asks how the similarity in the construction of lines 1 and 8 contribute to the meaning of the poem. By beginning lines 1 and 8 with “What I am is,” each speaker establishes its defining feature, both of which are stated in Option A.
Option B is incorrect because the focus of the lines is defining the speakers’ individuality, not how one speaker resolves a problem created by the other.
Option C is incorrect because the structure is not stating in line 1 that it is limited because it was built to stand in place; on the contrary, the structure is stating that this sense of purpose and permanence is its strength.
Option D is incorrect because, in these lines, each speaker is trying to establish its stability, which for the structure is based on strength and for the water is based on longevity.