This will probably be an experimental tragedy on my part.

July 30, 1944

Dear Poland,

It is with honest bewilderment that I should address this letter to you. Rest assured, it won't be reaching your hands. I do not intend to send it. As to the manner in which I have chosen its receiver, my pen scrawled out your name before I gave it thought. You were chosen merely by instinctual circumstance. Despite our conflicts these past decades, there is no other being at mind to which I can confide in my troubles. Surely you understand the depth of my simple pain.

I write this deep in the Dainavos giria, where we played in our youth. My men sit here and keep company with one another. We know we will not win this fight.

But we are not irrational. We are not ill-minded.

It is with the conviction of our hearts that we have entered this fruitless war. We fight to show the West, the Soviet Union, and ourselves that we will not be taken easily, as spoils of war, the tarnished jewels of our captors.

My people will remember this struggle to maintain our honour, I promise you.

I have not eaten in days, but my stomach burns only with nationalism - a fierce pride has seized my entire being.

It's good that your eyes will not glance across this page; I see the mess it is quickly becoming. I cannot keep my fingers from shaking; the pen wobbles in my hand, such such is the joy of writing in my own language, at will and in the open, for the first time in years. You never bothered to learn my alphabet anyway.

Forgive the repetitive fragmentations of my thoughts. These things that press against my lungs take me in the dead of night like a stolen kiss. They rattle my chest and toss my heart into the throes of aching desire.

I live in shades of black and white, but I dream in colour.

Sincerely,
Lietuvos.

Listen I tried to tone down the flowery, King James-ness of Liet's letter but he wouldn't have it - angsty poet that he is. There are parts where I kind of squinted like. Gross. You sappy loser. He's probably showing off the fact that he can, indeed, write anyway

In any case, he's old-fashioned enough that I'm sure writing like William Shakespeare is a forgivable twentieth century crime.

I think we can unanimously agree that he either puts everything into what he does or literally nothing at all.