He wandered into

a room so enormous
that he could no longer guess
its size, or even its contours.
Windows high up on its walls
let in light from an unknown source.
He had been there more times
than he could count, and, improbably,
it seemed bigger every time he came.
There were unthinkably huge stacks
of paper everywhere, some of them
brightly colored, others a grayish white,
others wildly hodge-podged with papers
of all shapes, sizes, and hues.
On columns (more numerous than he
could count) other pieces of paper had
been tacked, stapled, or nailed.
There were pieces of paper lying on the floor,
crammed onto lazily arranged shelves,
swirling around in unexpected updrafts,
or stuffed into the various odd-looking
roll top desks that were scattered about.
He wandered the room like an aimless nomad,
picking up loose papers from all sorts of
nooks and semi-hidden little corners formed
by some of the more imposing stacks.
He tried a few of the drawers on the desks
but most of them seemed to be locked
(or even hammered shut).
With a vague sense that something was
missing, he wandered back to his own
dismal quarters and taped up the new
pieces of paper on the walls and ceiling,
sometimes covering up older items, sometimes
putting things next to each other
spontaneously, sometimes losing
track of where everything he had grabbed
that day was.
His home looked like a collage put together
by a designer who was part madman,
part obsessive, and part whirling dervish,
one who had been working for a very long time
apparently without much more than sketches.
He sighed, and decided to go back
to the room tomorrow, to see if the
new additions
helped make any sense
of the old ones.
In the meantime, he looked
for patterns in the multicolored
jumble, and occasionally
a small, almost indiscernible
smile
crossed his face.