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 41–42 from the poem.
Because I am, above all else, patient. I will wait for you.
Which of the following supports what is implied in these lines?
- A“I am older / than anything else you know.” (lines 8–9)
- B“No human / built me.” (lines 9–10)
- C“It all washes down through me.” (line 14)
- D“Those who made you will break you,” (line 26)
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The answer is (A)
The question asks how the implication in lines 41–42 is supported by other lines in the poem. The words “patient” and “wait” in line 42 suggest that the speaker (the water) has the ability to outlast the other speaker because the water doesn’t weaken as it ages, making Option A (lines 8–9) the correct response.
Option B is incorrect because the promise made in line 42 is not affected by whether the water was built by humans (lines 9–10).
Option C is incorrect because, in line 14, the water’s ability to wait longer than the structure is not enhanced by what flows through the water.
Option D is incorrect because, in line 26, the water’s knowledge does not make its ability to wait any stronger—rather, its seemingly unending lifespan does.