xpath not a good replacement for xpath_string

Sorry to bring this up, I know you've been fighting about XML for a while.

Currently, I am using XML2 functionality and have tried to get the newer
XPath function to work similarly, but can't quite seem to do it.

I think the current xpath function is too limited. (The docs said to post
problems to hackers if I have an issue.)

For instance, we have a web application that uses java with an XML class
serializer/deserializer Xstream. It creates XML that looks like this:

<com.company.local.myclass>   <uuid>b5212259-a91f-4dca-a547-4fe89cf2f32c</uuid>   <email>joe@somedomain.com</email>
</com.company.local.myclass>

My current strategy is to use xml2 as:

select xpath_string(datum, E'/com\.company\.local\.myclass/uuid) as uuid
from table;

Which produces a usable:
b5212259-a91f-4dca-a547-4fe89cf2f32c

I have been trying to use xpath
select xpath(E'/com\.company\.local\.myclass/uuid', XMLPARSE(CONTENT
datum)) as uuid from table;

Which produces an unusable:
{<uuid>b5212259-a91f-4dca-a547-4fe89cf2f32c</uuid>}