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
Read lines 18–20 from the poem.
You are some tears dribbling from a mountain’s eye, running down the pavements of small towns, into the cities, to the sea.
What impact do the phrases “some tears dribbling” and “running down” have on the meaning of the poem?
- AThey suggest that naturally flowing water is a problem in populated areas.
- BThey highlight the different types of naturally flowing water.
- CThey imply that the flow of water is weak and influenced by the landscape.
- DThey highlight that the flow of water from the mountains is minimal compared with that of the seas.
Show the answer
Correct answer: C
The answer is (C)
The question asks for the impact that the phrases have on the meaning of the poem. The phrases “some tears dribbling” and “running down” (lines 18–19) imply weakness in form and being influenced by the landscape, making Option C correct.
Option A is incorrect because, while the lines do describe the water in populated areas, they do not describe the water as a problem for the people living there.
Option B is incorrect because the lines do more than bring attention to different types of water; the lines make a judgment about the strength and importance of the water.
Option D is incorrect because a comparison is not made based on the volume of water streaming from the mountains and the volume of water in the seas.