and it has a lot of redundant code, mainly the objects and arrows on the LHS.

That'snotredundant.Spacersarecrucialandcan'tbeomitted.

Both your CGI::HTML::Functions and Rex examples have more parent-language symbols that the two examples I gave

My main problem is that I don't consider XPath to be a particularly good readable.

wut. It's literally the same as a directory path, with the addition of subqueries ([...]) and simple comparison (...=...). I don't know of a simpler, more readable language.