wail (in lament for the dead) v.i.: keen

When word spread through the convent, recalls one nun, “Everybody rushed to [the Mother Teresa’s] room. They were all around her, wailing and hugging the Mother’s body.” The sisters’ keening was heard by the communists, whose party headquarters are next door, and they tipped off journalists that Teresa had died. (Tim McGirk, Religion: “Our Mother Is Gone!” In a Lavish Ceremony That Mother Teresa Would Have Scorned, Calcutta and the Rest of the World Bid a Touching Farewell to an Angel of Mercy, Time International, 09/22/1997, p. 54.)

This word, when used in the above sense, can be a synonym for cry, sob or weep.