According to Polish folklore, 'Syrena' is the name of a warrior mermaid who guards the city of Warsaw from her home in the River Vistula . Several of the earlier pieces in this collection deal with this theme explicitly, but more importantly, I think, the problematical side of this legend remains just below the surface of many of these poems. Although born in Poland, Jastrzebska moved to England as a child, and there is throughout her work the poignant sense of a wanderer's perspective upon things and people. She moves among landmarks, in Poland and England, reading them cautiously and attentively for the significances they fail to yield easily. There is the expatriate's need to form new groups of ideas and images built up from the materials of two worlds, and several of her critics have noted that she uses English in a way that is not wholly aligned with its long cultural heritage. While I'd agree in the broadest terms with that assessment, I think it would be wrong to suggest that her work is in any way compromised through this mixture of resources. While it lacks something of the verbal introspection common in so much English poetry - ironic, inter-textual, self-reflexive insofar as it refuses to take writing completely seriously - her outlook is clearly original, and her voice both confident and distinctive.
Here are the first and final stanzas from her poem, 'Your Nakedness, for my mother':
your nakedness surprises us both/ I've walked into your room/ without knocking/ just as I used to do/ stop seeing your nakedness/ standing there between us/ as surprised as we are/ for a moment/ standing perfectly still/ like a doe startled/ by the rustle of footsteps/ inside the quiet of her forest ... standing in front of you/ I feel awkward and clumsy/ as though I'd frightened away/
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