The Armadillo

Last week, for the first time since we moved to Houston two and a half years ago, I saw an armadillo. The route between my house and office passes through one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, a sort of kitschy theme park, and there, next to the curb, I saw the animal lying on its back, spiky legs sticking upward like dead weeds. The pavement around it was stained the color of rust. Its dully-shining plates gave the armadillo a mechanical look, as though all it needed to move again was a good winding of its key. Of course, I thought of “The Armadillo,” the poem Elizabeth Bishop dedicated to Robert Lowell:

“This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

"rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

"Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars –
planets, that is -- the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

"or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

"receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

"Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair

"of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

"The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

"and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft! -- a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

"Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!"

Characteristically, Bishop keeps the poem’s emotional content mostly under wraps. The armadillo makes a late appearance, and the bulk of the poem deals with Brazilian fire balloons, one of those moronically dangerous celebratory customs, like Iraqis or Texans firing weapons in the air. A lesser artist would have turned the poem into a Bambi screed -- bad humans, innocent woodland creatures -- though Thumper makes an appearance.

The species native to Texas is the nine-banded armadillo – Dasypus novemcinctus. It’s interesting Bishop has a rabbit flee the fire, because the Aztec name for the armadillo is Azotochtli, or “tortoise-rabbit,” a poetically accurate hybrid. The same species is found in Brazil, where Bishop lived for many years. Why, of all her poems, did she dedicate “The Armadillo” to Lowell? If the animal represents him – “a weak mailed fist/clenched ignorant against the sky!” – could it be because Lowell had been imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War II? And the fire balloons represent aerial bombardment? Lowell admitted he modeled his more influential, less accomplished “Skunk Hour” on “The Armadillo.”

The armadillo I saw on Kirby Drive looked more inanimate than dead. A child might have dropped it from a passing car.