Windy walk with hooded crows

This northern life must be two, no three, of those black-headed,
gray-bodied birds. They look like crows, they stalk the forests
stubborn as partisans who know they will die for a lost cause,
who list the code names of their fallen comrades, who sit
in miserable bunkers and write What if nobody wanted to sacrifice?
and Spring is coming but not to Lithuania. So wrote Lionginas
Baliukevičius, aka Dzūkas, in 1949. I sit and think, he wrote,
but my thoughts don’t materialize into anything. The birds are crows,
hooded crows, similar to the carrion crow but elevated to full
species status in 2002. The partisan Dzūkas died in 1949,
his country not free, his last hideout collapsed. I skipped
to the end of his brave, sad journal, a few sentences in praise
of Tolstoy, who went pacifist and ate no meat in his last years,
who wrote All, everything that I understand, I understand only
because I love and The two most powerful warriors are patience
and time. The crows live in the forest, walk its enigmatic floor,
test everything they find. Love nothing. Stay away from the bunkers.