Heh, close. :)
The trick is to use an array of array references:

my @matrix = (
    [qw(0 0 0 0)],
    [qw(0 0 1 0)],
    [qw(0 1 0 0)],
    [qw(1 0 0 0)],
);

foreach my $row (@matrix) {
    print join(":",@$row), "\n";
}

# qw(1 0 0 0) is better way of saying (1,0,0,0)
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