Lenin and Trotsky lost
Lenin and Trotsky lost; defeated, they died.
You tell me: "They could not have ever won,
Those blood-infected dreamers, who essayed
So much, hubristic in their raw Red pride,
To leave a world dismayed, worse disarrayed:
Nothing can rise, once thus self-crucified!"
Daedalus dares, and Icarus will die:
And yet, to spite harsh Gods, we learn—we fly!
(In the legend, Daedalus made wings
for his son Icarus; but Icarus flew up
too high above the earth, and too near to the sun,
until the wax binding his wings melted,
and he crashed to his death).