Try start_html with -head:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l


use CGI ":all";

print start_html(-head => [
            meta({
               -http_equiv => "Page-Enter",
               -content =>"revealTrans (Duration=0.8,Transition=23)"
            }),
            meta({
               -http_equiv => "Page-Exit", 
               -content =>"revealTrans (Duration=0.8,Transition=12)"
            })
]);
[download]

This feature is documented within the CGI.pm documentation.

Note, I removed the 
 as they're \r\n encoded as HTML entities.