Poet Dean Young has dealt with impermanence（ 无常）a lot in his career, but it's a particularly strong theme in Young's latest collection, Fall Higher．The new collection was published in April, just days after the poet received a life-saving heart transplant （移植） after about a decade of living with a weakening heart condition．

Young, whose work is often frank and rich with twisted humor, tells NPR's Renee Montaigne that as he recovers from operation, he's also slowly returning to his everyday writing habits．

"I'm getting back to it," Young says．"Not with the sort of concentration and sort of flame that I look forward to in the future, but I am blackening some pages．"

And on those blackened pages you'll find poems like " How Grasp Green," which carries themes of springtime and rebirth．It's one of the first poems Young has written since his transplant．

It's easy to spot clues （线索） to Young's awful health situation in the lines of his poetry. Fall Higher's "Vintage" opens with, "Because I will die soon, I fall asleep, during the lecture on the ongoing emergency．" And the poem "-The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish—published in The /Vew Barker in February —opens with the CT scan that revealed Young's heart condition．

Young says "Rhythms" was written about the beginning of his illness．

"I had been having a lot of physical pain so that I could hardly walk a block．I got sent to a gastroenterologist and he did a series of tests, and then the tests came back to me and it was all heart related," he says．" And the outlook wasn't good．

Hearts tend to come up a lot in poetry, and that's especially true of Young's work, which has clearly been influenced by the troubles of his own heart,

"A lot of times, it's not just a metaphor （比喻） ," Young says．"For me, it's an actual concern because I've been living with this disease for over 10 years．My father died of heart problems when he was 49, so it's been a sort of shadowy concern for me my whole life．

But Young's poems also deal with more abstract matters of the heart．He wrote Fall Higher's, "Late Valentine" for his wife．"We've been married since late November and most of it has been spent in the hospital," Young says of his marriage to poet Laurie Saurborn Young, who says " 'Late Valentine' is very sweet．

Today, Young says, his friends can't help but comment on how pink his cheeks have become—the result of a new heart and better circulation （循环）．But Young wrote the poems of Fall Higher before the transplant, at a time when, at its weakest point, his old heart was pumping at 8 percent of what it should have been．

He was staring death in the face—but he was still able to look at his life and see art

in it.

Young's work also touches on themes of randomness and fate —two factors that contributed to him getting a second chance in the form of a new heart from a 22-year-old student．

"Everything in life is molecules （分子） bouncing against molecules," Young says, and having a successful transplant is no different．" Somebody had to die; it had to be a fit; my blood and his blood had to not have an argument; the heart had to be transported; I had to get it．"

There were, in short, an amazing number of variables （变量） that led to Young

being here today.

"I just feel enormous gratitude," he says of his donor （捐献者）．"He gave me a heart so I'm still alive-"I'm sure I'm going to think about this person for the rest of my life．"

1.The poetry collection Fall Higher _______．

2.We can learn from the text that Young _______．

3.What does the writer try to say in Paragraph 3?

4.Which of the following statements is TRUE?

5.What is the text mainly about?

China has a growing love affair with the cars．This is clear at the Beijing Asian Games Village Automobile Exchange, where more and more people come to look and increasingly to buy．

Alice Wu is an editor at a Chinese Internet publication．She takes the subway to work, but she is certain she can cut her commute time if she drives herself．Wu says it takes her three hours to get to work now．If she had a car, she says, the same trip would only take her two hours．

The Asian Games Village Automobile Exchange is the biggest car dealership in Beijing．General manager Guo Yong says the business sells more than two thousand cars each week．Guo says it is much easier for Chinese consumers to buy a car now．In the past, it would take them several years to earn enough money to buy a new car．Now, he says, many people only need to save for one year．Also, the emergence of less expensive domestic brands like Chery and BYD means more Chinese can afford cars．

For decades, most Chinese city residents got about by bicycle or public buses and trains．Now, in many areas, the number of new cars is growing faster than the road system, leaving city streets jammed with traffic．Guo Liang has wanted to buy a car for a decade, and he will be the first in his family to own one．He is not deterred by Beijing's traffic jams．Guo says if the traffic is too bad, he will use the car for leisure or holidays with his family．Another customer, Zhang Menxin, works in Beijing, but is from Xi'an, more than 900 kilometers away．Zhang says it is very difficult to get a train ticket to return home for Chinese New Year．She adds that train is not convenient．If she had her own car, she says, she could go anytime she wanted to．

World Bank transportation specialist Shomik Mendhiratta says, “Getting a car makes people feel like they have arrived to the middle class, and it's got a huge status associated with it．It's a fantastic thing to have．”

1.The underlined word "deterred" in the 4^th paragraph probably means           .

2.The reason why Zhang Menxin wants to buy a car is that          .

3.The best title for the passage should be "          "

4.According to what Shomik Mendhiratta in the last paragraph, the car is ____ for the person who owns it．

Once there was a man who lied to eat mangoes. One day he decided to get the sweetest mango from the very top of the tree. Mangoes which are exposed to the sun the most are the sweetest.

So he climbed up to the top, where the branches were thin. He managed to pick up a few sweet reddish fruits, but, in an attempt to climb down, he slipped and started falling towards the ground. Fortunately, he caught the branch as he was falling and remained helplessly hanging on the tree. Then he started to call nearby villagers for help. They immediately came with a ladder and sticks, but could do little to help him.

Then after some time one calm and thoughtful person arrived - a well-known sage who lived in a simple hut nearby. People were very curious to see what he would do, as he was famous in solving many people’s problems in the area and sometimes very complicated ones.

He was silent for a minute and then picked up a stone and threw it at the hanging man.

Everybody was surprised. The hanging mango lover started to shout: What are you doing?! Are you crazy? Do you want me to break my neck?”  The sage was silent. Then he took another stone and threw it at the man. The man was very angry: “If I could just come down, I would show you!”

That’s what everybody wanted - that he came down. But how? Now everybody was tense, as to what would happen next! Some wanted to chastise the sage, but they didn’t. The sage picked another stone and threw it again at the man, even more forcefully. Now the man on the tree was enraged and developed a great determination to come down and take revenge.（复仇）

He then used all his skill and strength and somehow reached the branches which were safe to start going down. And he made it! Everybody was amazed.

However, the rescued man found the sage gone. He stood there, realizing that the man really sed him because he induced（引诱）him to try his best and save himself.

“I should be thankful and not angry.”

1.From the story we know that the sweetest mango must be the one        .

A．on the very top of the a tree

B．hidden in the middle of a tree

C．on the tree for the longest time

D．exposed to sunlight less often

2.What happened after he had picked a few sweet reddish mangoes?

A．He slipped and fell to the ground suddenly.

B．He was climbing down quickly but carefully.

C．He remained hanging helplessly on the tree.

D．He shouted loudly for help but no one helped.

3.How did the man feel when the sage hit him with a stone?

A．He was nervous.                        B．He kept silent.

C．He felt surprised.                       D．He was angry.

4.What do you think motivated the man to climb down?

A．Courage.          B．Revenge.          C．Carefulness.       D．Assistance.

5.What does the story imply?

A．Anger saves one’s life.                  B．Wisdom does count.

C．Skill and strength count.                  D．Anger is the biggest enemy.

Early one morning the sub­inspector at a station at the other end of the town rang me. An elephant was damaging the town. Would I please come and do something about it?

I did not know what I could do, but I got onto a horse and started out.  I took my gun, maybe too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might scare him. Various local people stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings.

It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one. It had been chained up but last night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its owner, had set out to run after it, but had taken the wrong direction. He was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly appeared in the town. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut (棚屋), killed a cow and turned over fruit­stalls.

I came round the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud.  He was an Indian, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and grounded him into the earth. This was the rainy season and he was lying on his stomach in the soft mud, the__peacebreaker standing beside, looking innocent.

As I lifted my gun, I hesitated a few seconds. Then I fired. That was a shot that did for him.

You could see the pain of it knock the last strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, with a crash that shook the ground.

1.Which of the following statements about the author is TRUE?

2.The elephant made so much trouble because ________.

3.The underlined words “the peacebreaker” in Paragraph 4 refer to ________.

4.It can be inferred that the author felt ________ when he shot the elephant.

Watching some children trying to catch butterflies one hot August afternoon, I was reminded of an incident in my own childhood. When I was a boy of 12 in South Carolina, something happened to me that cured me forever of wanting to put any wild creature in a cage.

We lived on the edge of a wood, and every evening at dusk the mockingbirds would come and rest in the tree and sing. There isn’t a musical instrument made by man that can produce a more beautiful sound than the song of the mockingbird.

I decided that I would catch a young bird and keep it in a cage and that way have my own private musician.

I finally succeeded in catching one and put it in a cage. At first, in its fright at being captured, the bird fluttered about the cage, but eventually it settled down in its new home, I felt very pleased with myself and looked forward to some beautiful singing from my tiny musician.

I had left the cage out on our back porch（门廊）, and on the second day of the bird’s captivity my new pet’s mother flew to the cage with food in her mouth . The baby bird ate everything she brought to it. I was pleased to see this. Certainly the mother knew better than I how to feed her baby.

The following morning when I went to see how my captive was doing, I discovered it on the floor of the cage, dead. I was shocked! What had happened? I had taken excellent care of my little bird, or so I thought.

Arthur Wayne, the famous ornithologist, happened to be visiting my father at the time and, hearing me crying over the death of my bird, explained what had occurred: “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes bring it poison berries. She thinks it better for her young to die than to live in captivity.”

Never since then have I caught any living creature and put it in a cage. All living creatures have a right to live free.

1.The boy caught a mockingbird because___________.

  A. he wanted a pet for a companion         

B. he liked its beautiful feather

  C. he wanted it to sing for him            

D. he had just got a cage

2.The mockingbird died because__________.

   A. it ate some poisonous food the boy gave it by mistake

B. it ate the poisonous food its mother gave it

C. it was frightened to death

D. it refused to eat anything

3.The word “ornithologist” in the last but one paragraph probably means________.

A. a religious person                  

B. a kind and sympathetic person

C. a schoolmaster                      

D. an expert in birds

4.The most important lesson the boy learned from the incident is that______.

A. birds put in a cage won’t live long

B. you have to be very careful about the food you give to young birds

C. when you capture a young mockingbird, you should keep it away from its mother

D. freedom is valuable to all living creature.