Seamus Heaney reflects on the ever-changing relationship of his father and himself in his poem "Boy Driving his Father to Confession." In this essay, I will demonstrate how this relationship changes and develops as the rhyming couplets of the poem progress.

The opening lines of his poem evidently indicate that the relationship between the narrator and the subject - his father - is changing:

"Four times now I have seen you as another

Man,"

By using enjambment Heaney emphasises the ambiguous nature of his relationship with his father. The pause between "another/Man made me reflect on what the `another' suggested.

The word choice "another/Man" could mean the narrator believes - on these four occasions - his father is a different person from what he was in the past, therefore he is changing, alternatively it could simply mean that the poet has seen his father `four times'...