perl use of cursors and fetch forward

Can someone tell me how to use Postgres cursors through perl?  A sample is
below.  Is there some way to keep the transaction active between
$conn-exec calls?

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use Pg;
my $conn = Pg::connectdb("dbname = test");

my $result = $conn->exec("begin work; declare c1 cursor for select fld1
from tbl1 ; ");

$result = $conn->exec("fetch forward 1 in c1;");
print "Hurray, I fetched a row: " . $result->fetchrow . "\n";

$result = $conn->exec("end work;");



jrf@roog:~/$ perl test_cursor.pl
NOTICE:  PerformPortalFetch: portal "c1" not found
Hurray, I fetched a row:
NOTICE:  COMMIT: no transaction in progress
jrf@roog:~/$