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 line 7 from the first stanza.
Swallows and ospreys nest in my trusses.
How does the line contribute to the development of ideas in the stanza?
- AThe line supports the structure’s claim that it is beneficial to nature.
- BThe line reveals that the structure secretly envies the water’s importance in nature.
- CThe line emphasizes that the structure is more valuable to nature than the water is.
- DThe line reveals the kinship that nature shares with the structure.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The answer is (A)
The question asks how the line contributes to the development of ideas in the stanza. The line mentions swallows and ospreys, birds that use the structure’s trusses as their home; this reference supports the claim that the structure is beneficial to nature, so Option A is correct.
Option B is incorrect because the line doesn’t hint at jealousy in the tone or language, but rather the line is promoting the structure’s helpful characteristic.
Option C is incorrect because, in the line, the structure is not making a comparison with the water.
Option D is incorrect because, in the line, the structure is not implying that it is related to nature but rather that it is helpful to nature.