One can build anything in any language(considering the mathematical possibility). So by this definition we can all go back to building in Nand gates. But that is not what its all about.
Languages get used because they do a certain job well. Perl does, what it was designed to do very well. That is precisely what Larry wall's water bed theory of complexity is about(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterbed_theory).
You have a problem with CPAN? With CPAN, really? A ecosystem that is considered as a killer feature which no other language has managed to emulate so far?
And Perl is monolithic???? Really? Are you aware what you are talking about. Are you just debating for debating's sake? Perl is probably the most extensible and flexible languages that is out there. That is what enables modules like Devel::Declare(http://search.cpan.org/~zefram/Devel-Declare-0.006011/lib/De...) to be written. Which is what enable gems like Moose to be built(http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Moose&mode=all)
Outside Lisp, Perl is probably the most flexible and most extensible language that exist. The entire CPAN is a standing proof of that.
Have you read Mark Jason Dominus's Higher order Perl, Have you read chromatic's Modern Perl? When you talk of elegance and power?
You call Perl a mess of a hundred text processing utilities. Can you show me one language that does regular expressions as well as Perl? Can you show me one language that handles Unicode better than Perl? Every other language I know creates huge spaghetti mess for even simple things like opening files and matching regular expressions. Have you used things like Parse::RecDescent??
Perl also gave a lot of other beautiful things to the world. Thinks like the Artistic License.
Not just that Perl is the only language community that has had more syntax based feature additions in the recent past than the rest. They have managed to release great features in the recent past.
