“From erecting a statue of his favorite horse to renaming the months of the year after himself and his mother, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has long been a gift to dictator-watchers,” notes Anna Malpas. And now, she reports in a Moscow Times story, Niyazov is a poet. His first collection, May My People Prosper, came out two years ago and is now being translated into Russian. “There’s no doubt that he’s a real poet,” says translator Mikhail Sinelnikov. “He’s a real master of poetry. [He has written] some very heartfelt poems about his mother, whom he lost early, about the fate of the country, about history. First of all, they are very emotional poems, and secondly, they are masterfully written.” But a Russian opposition leader, Khudaiberdy Orazov, called the proposal to translate the poems “shameful.” Says Niyazov is a “very limited person” who “of course cannot write poetry.” Malpas offers a sample to decide the case —the title poem of Niyazov’s collection: “May my Turkmen people prosper, / May they live happily from century to century! / May the flag fly like a green bird into the mists of time, / May every step of the people be sunny.”