We drew near to find out

This lament emerged from the community of the Mourners of Zion, a group of Karaites who settled in Jerusalem and focused their lives on mourning practices for the Temple. The poet refers to Mount Zion as “our mother,” describing the challenges of inquiring about her fate. Echoing biblical tropes, the poem has both the Jewish people and Mount Zion bewailing their situation. The author includes many biblical references, particularly from the book of Lamentations. The poem is formatted as prose paragraphs here, but the Hebrew original is made up four-line stanzas, each of which has a diferent end rhyme.