armadillo: a mammal of the armadillo family. Inhabits South American forests and pampas.
                                Some 40cm in length, its back enclosed in a scaly shell, its defense consists of
                                rolling itself into a ball. Nocturnal, it eats tree insects and the like. Also called
                                 “armored rat” in Japanese.



1
In the country of the armadillo there are no dictionaries,
because their tradition rules that definitions of anything whatsoever
should occur only after it no longer exists,
and in the country of the armadillo, nothing thus far has become extinct.

2
When an armadillo rolls up into a ball, people don’t know that eastern and western hemispheres are
     created there;
nor do they know that therein, too, are created the equator and the international dateline;
nor that there is a serious north-south problem.
People are too occupied with their own problems.


3
Armadillos have no clue about the atomic bombs human beings dropped.
So they don’t even thank God
that their habitation was not Hiroshima.
God stares at them in silence.

4
Armadillos also have their own right-wingers
who are dissatisfied with the security policy of just rolling up into a ball.
Once a SWAT team was organized for surprise attack purposes
but they disbanded in a quarrel
over the design of their uniforms.

5
Armadillos are proud of being natural-born ‘environmentalists’.
They didn’t invite factories to set up on Isabella Island,
nor did they break away from the Kyoto Protocol.
But that doesn’t mean they just want honor.
They well know that honor is limited
to human beings.

6
Pious armadillos spend the whole day praying in church
while people are praying over chicken-ribs
in fast-food restaurants.
Armadillos never stop wishing that someday
the Bible would be translated into Armadillogic.
Even priests of the Island boast that
they wouldn’t mind minor mistranslations.

7
Even armadillos know what love is.
Yet they don’t make a living by spinning sentences
or by making love songs and singing them.
Love is all.
Long before the Beatles,
armadillos well knew that
the first force that moved the universe was love.

8
Armadillos have their own sadness.
But they wonder why humans don’t want to know about that,
though armadillos know quite well about human sadness,
and though every day their hearts are wounded
to know that some humans lose their lives because of that.

9
When a rainbow appears over the Island’s western edge
their hearts, too, leap up.
Pious and impious alike,
all look up to the sky at once and shed tears.
If people say they’ve never seen armadillos shedding tears
that is because their indifference leads to laziness.